ELLAS  AND  HESPERIA 


■•'i'-  "f -^ ■/' 


i'' 


■'M 


Hi-. 


B.  L.  GILDERSLEEVE 


(/(^.^i/i^^^ 


/.So 


University  of  Virginia 
Barbour-Page  Foundation 


HELLAS  AND    HESPERIA 


BALTIMORE,   MD.,  U.   S.   A. 


(l^aW^    <^     ^Lc^Mjri.jJjejiMz. 


University  of  Virginia 
Barbour-Page  Foundation 


HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

OR 

THE  VITALITY  OF  GREEK  STUDIES 
IN  AMERICA 


THREE  LECTURES 


BY 


BASIL  LANNEAU  GILDERSLEEVE 

FRANCIS  WHITE   PROFESSOR  OF  GREEK   IN   THE   JOHNS    HOPKINS    UNIVERSITY 
FORMERLY  PROFESSOR  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 


NEW   YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1909 


J    J    3      J    >  ■» 


Copyright,  1909, 

BY 

THE  RECTOR  AND   VISITORS   OF  THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 


•        C         «        «     «   • 


€     f      •  •      • 


C  •       •   •    • 


<«         •.•C«t««*i 


3 


THE  BARBOUR-PAGE  LECTURE 
FOUNDATION 

The  University  of  Virginia  is  indebted  for 
the  establishment  of  the  Barbour-Page  Foun- 
dation to  the  wisdom  and  generosity  of  Mrs. 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  of  Washington,  D.  C. 
In  1907,  Mrs.  Page  donated  to  the  University 
the  sum  of  $22,000,  the  annual  income  of 
which  is  to  be  used  in  securing  each  session 
the  delivery  before  the  University  of  a  series 
of  not  less  than  three  lectures  by  some  dis- 
tinguished man  of  letters  or  of  science.  The 
conditions  of  the  Foundation  require  that  the 
Barbour-Page  lectures  for  each  session  be  not 
less  than  three  in  number;  that  they  be  deliv- 
ered by  a  specialist  in  some  branch  of  litera- 
ture, science,  or  art;  that  the  lecturer  present 
in  the  series  of  lectures  some  fresh  aspect  or 
aspects  of  the  department  of  thought  in  which 
he  is  a  specialist;  and  that  the  entire  series 
delivered  each  session,  taken  together,  shall 
possess  such  unity  that  they  may  be  published 
S       by  the  Foundation  in  book  form. 


0 


L.«V 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

Prepared  in  vacation  time,  far  from  the 
sober  array  of  authorities,  these  lectures 
have  been  drawn  mainly  from  my  memories 
of  life  and  books,  the  life  my  own,  the  books, 
perhaps  in  undue  measure,  my  own  studies, 
published  and  unpublished;  and  planned  as 
they  were  for  a  kindred  audience,  they  take 
for  granted  the  personal  sympathy,  which  they 
were  so  fortunate  as  to  find  in  my  old  home, 
a  sympathy  which  they  can  hardly  be  expected 
to  find  elsewhere.  At  one  time  I  thought  to 
recast  them  for  the  larger  public,  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  conditions  of  the  Barbour-Page 
Foundation,  they  were  destined  to  reach,  but 
the  time  available  for  the  process  was  scant,  at 
least  for  a  busy  teacher.  Then,  again,  I  under- 
took at  odd  hours  to  add  some  notes  of  the 
orthodox  type,  partly  for  the  sake  of  the  philo- 
logical guild,  partly  to  justify  myself  to  myself 
for  my  seeming  trivialities.  But  I  have  been  a 
critic  so  long  that  I  am  inured  to  my  own  crit- 


PREFATORY    NOTE 


icisms  of  myself,  of  which  I  have  not  been 
sparing  in  all  these  years.  And  so  these  lec- 
tures are  printed  substantially  as  they  were  de- 
livered, and  I  console  myself  for  their  short- 
comings by  the  reflection  that  they  belong  to 
my  hearers  as  well  as  to  me,  and  will  serve 
to  recall  the  memories  and  traditions  of  my 
twenty  years  of  service  in  the  University  of 
Virginia.  At  any  rate  they  constitute  a  "  hu- 
man document,"  and  under  the  domination 
of  an  affected  impersonality  human  documents 
are  becoming  rare  in  the  range  of  studies  once 
called  "  the  humanities." 


(Xa^W    <=<  .  Y*^;^^Aa.^xjX<ui.*<2. 


ERRATA. 

p. 

65, 

11. 

8,  ! 

9,  for  Dj'auspitar 

read  Djauspitar. 

p. 

76, 

11. 

11, 

16,  for  'Phi//ips 

'  read  ' 

Phi/ips'. 

p. 

122 

,  1. 

23, 

,  read  '  remedy  for 

hiccup, 

sneezing'. 

Lecture  I 
THE  CHANNELS  OF  LIFE 

Honors  that  come  late  in  life,  as  a  rule,  in- 
volve little  responsibility.  Those  who,  be- 
ing young,  believe  in  youth,  put  a  man's 
floruit  at  forty,  blissfully  unaware,  most  of 
them,  that  they  are  simply  repeating  an  an- 
cient formula.  Recognition,  they  say,  lags 
behind  achievement,  and  the  honor  paid  to 
an  old  man  is  really  honor  paid  to  the  young 
man  that  he  has  been.  The  veteran  himself, 
according  to  his  mood,  according  to  his  tem- 
perament, smiles  sadly  or  grins  ecstatically 
when  his  draft  on  posterity — how  seldom 
honored — is  endorsed  by  this  academic  body 
or  that.  Your  university,  which  was  my  uni- 
versity until  I  had  passed  the  acme  of  forty, 
confers  no  honorary  degrees,  and  the  high 
honor  that  has  come  to  me  from  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  University  of  Virginia  means 
service;  and,  hardened  as  I  am  to  public  de- 


lo  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

liverance,  I  can  honestly  say  that  I  never  ap- 
proached any  function  of  my  long  life  with 
so  much  misgiving  as  this.  My  task  has 
haunted  me  for  months.  In  the  flush  of  my 
youth  I  did  not  tremble  to  assume  the  work 
of  the  Greek  chair  here;  now  after  more 
than  fifty  years  I  marvel  at  my  audacity. 
"  Old  men,"  Cobden  is  reported  to  have  said 
of  Palmerston,  "  old  men  with  unsatisfied  am- 
bitions are  the  worst  of  desperadoes."  But 
I  have  long  since  flung  away  ambition,  and  it 
must  have  been  in  that  strange  return  of 
youth  to  which  all  ancients  are  exposed  that 
I  have  accepted,  perhaps  too  lightly,  an  honor 
which  is  weighted  with  a  grave  responsibility, 
and,  as  I  take  up  the  burden  of  this  initial 
course  of  lectures  on  the  Barbour-Page  Foun- 
dation, I  am  sadly  reminded  of  an  old  friend 
of  mine  who,  towards  the  close  of  a  useful 
career,  attempted  to  gather  up  what  he  had 
learned  and  taught  for  so  many  years  into  a 
compact  body  of  doctrine.  He  was  younger 
then  than  I  am  to-day,  but  the  effort  shat- 
tered him.     Fortunately  for  me  the  present 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  ii 

undertaking  is  not  of  such  magnitude  as  was 
his,  but  it  is  after  all  a  serious  matter  to  ini- 
tiate a  lecture  course  like  this,  and  to  try  to 
justify  your  indulgent  estimate  of  the  work 
I  did  here  during  twenty  years  of  faithful 
effort,  and  of  the  work  I  have  done  since  in 
the  spirit  of  this  great  school.  For  me  it  is 
a  manner  of  unification  of  my  whole  career, 
it  is  a  manner  of  reentrant  curve;  but,  quite 
apart  from  the  importance  of  this  service  for 
me  personally,  and  for  the  possible  influence 
of  my  success  or  failure  on  those  who  are  to 
follow  me  in  this  office,  no  more  significant 
step  has  been  taken  at  this  university  for  many 
years  than  this  advance  towards  intellectual 
and  spiritual  brotherhood  with  your  fellow- 
workers  beyond  these  academic  walls.  In 
my  day,  if  you  will  pardon  me  for  saying 
so,  we  were  all  perhaps  a  little  too  conscious 
of  our  conscientiousness,  and  there  was  a  cer- 
tain austerity  in  our  bearing  towards  those 
who  were  doing  their  best,  their  poor  best, 
to  further  the  cause  of  sound  learning  else- 
where.   There  has  been  a  change  of  late  years, 


la  HELLAS   AND    HESPERLi 

a  change  that  was  emphasized  by  one  of  your 
own  leaders.  At  the  inauguration  of  Presi- 
dent Alderman,  Professor  Francis  H.  Smith, 
the  only  survivor  of  the  faculty  of  1856, 
the  faculty  I  first  knew,  said :  "  A  new  day 
has  arisen  upon  our  land,  and  an  American 
university  is  no  longer  a  local  institution,  but 
an  important  factor  in  our  national  life.  The 
universities  of  our  country  belong  to  a  real 
union,  though  with  an  unwritten  constitution. 
What  happens  to  one  concerns  all."  Strong 
personal  ties,  for  instance,  are  forming  be- 
tween the  Virginia  school  and  the  Baltimore 
school,  and  if  the  Barbour-Page  lectureship 
brings  no  new  light  to  this  candle  of  the  Lord, 
it  brings  what  is  better  than  new  light,  pre- 
cious as  new  light  is,  it  brings  fresh  love.  I 
for  one  do  not  come  to  teach  the  few  sur- 
vivors of  the  golden  age  of  my  renowned 
predecessor,  Gessner  Harrison.  I  do  not  come 
to  teach  the  men  who  have  been  privileged  to 
follow  the  lessons  of  a  Price  and  a  Wheeler, 
the  men  who  have  been  trained  in  the  school  of 
the    eminent    Hellenist    whose    breadth    and 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  13 

depth  of  knowledge  within  and  without  his 
chosen  domain  puts  every  specialist  to  shame. 
I  do  not  come  to  teach.  I  come  to  renew  for 
myself,  and  haply  for  others,  the  consecration 
of  earlier  days;  and  those  who  are  to  come 
after  me  will,  I  have  no  doubt,  return  to  the 
sphere  of  their  labors  quickened  by  contact 
with  your  unique  academic  life. 

According  to  the  conditions  of  the  Founda- 
tion, the  lecturer  is  to  speak  of  that  which  lies 
within  the  range  of  his  special  studies,  and  it 
is  a  sad  fact  that  most  of  those  who  know  me 
at  all,  know  me,  first,  as  the  author  of  a  Latin 
Grammar,  and  next,  as  a  professor  of  Greek 
— Greek,  which  they  tell  me  is  doomed,  and 
grammar  which  is  damned  already.  Some 
years  ago  I  had  a  new  shudder,  as  Victor 
Hugo  calls  it,  when  I  found  that  in  some 
schools  there  are  classes  in  Gildersleeve  as 
there  are  classes  in  Conic  Sections.  "  Gram- 
mar," says  an  eminent  academic  authority, 
himself  a  Hellenist,  "  is  to  the  average 
healthy  human  being  the  driest  and  deathliest 
of  all  the  disciplines;"  and  grammarians  have 


14  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

not  been  looked  on  with  much  favor  in  either 
ancient  or  modern  times,  at  best  as  a  higher 
type  of  hedge  schoolmaster.  Such  a  hedge 
schoolmaster  figures  in  the  Greek  Anthology. 
His  name  has  an  aristocratic  ring  and  recalls 
the  great  Arcadian  seeress  who  taught  Socra- 
tes the  secret  of  true  love.  But  Diotimus  had 
come  down  in  the  world,  and  the  mocking 
anthologist  sings : 

Aldtl,u)  AioTifiov  Of  ev  Trerpaici  naOrfrai 
Tapyapkuv  natalv  ^^ra  kol  aTicpa  Myuv 

or,  if  he  had  lived  to-day,  and  been  utterly 
desperate,  would  perhaps  have  sung : 

Diotimus,  poor  grammarian ! 

If  my  heart  hath  pitied  e'er  a  one, 

It  is  he. 
Who,  an  almost  centenarian, 
Perched  upon  a  "  peak  in  Darien," 
Teaches  little  Jack  and  Mary  Ann 

ABC. 

In  the  same  anthology,  a  grammarian  of  a 
somewhat  better  class  is  ridiculed,  a  university 
professor,  who  is  supposed  to  say: 

Xaiper'  'ApiarEidov  rov  p^ropng  etrra  fiadTjTai, 
TEcaapei  oi  Tolxoi  kuI  rpia  avrpiXta, 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  15 

which  is  being  interpreted: 

I'm  a  success,  sir,  I'm  a  success,  sir, 

Seven  steady  students  are  at  each  lecture. 

Count  if  you  please,  sir,  four  walls  and  three  desks,  sir. 

Now  if  these  things  were  done  in  the  green 
wood  of  antiquity,  what  is  to  be  expected  of 
the  dry  wood  of  modern  times  ?  All  literature 
is  full  of  absurd  grammarians,  Dominie  Samp- 
sons, and  Doctor  Panglosses,  and  Doctor  Syn- 
taxes; and  though  I  am  a  great  stickler  for  the 
honor  of  the  guild  to  which  I  belong,  still  I 
must  say  again  that  I  should  not  like  to  have 
my  individuality  merged  in  my  Latin  Gram- 
mar, and  this  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
the  kneaded  clod  of  a  crabbed  text-book.  To 
be  sure,  in  Browning's  Grammarian's  Funeral, 
the  poet  has  done  something  to  redeem  the 
craft,  and  I  welcome  the  vindication;  for 
whilst  Browning  and  his  commentators  do  not 
fail  to  tell  us  that  the  technical  grammarian 
of  the  present  day  was  not  meant  so  much 
as  the  grammarian  of  the  Renascence — the 
student  of  antique  literature — still  the  man 
who   "  properly  based   oun,   dead   from   the 


i6  HELLAS    AND    HESPEmA 

waist  down,"  belongs  to  our  guild.  He  be- 
longs to  the  "  corner-hummers  "  and  "  mono- 
syllablers  "  of  the  old  epigram. 

But  I  am  not  grammarian  enough  to  ha- 
rangue an  audience,  not  composed  of  special- 
ists, on  any  of  the  monosyllabic  themes  that  are 
so  fascinating  to  the  initiated.  Not  that  I  am 
ashamed  of  being  a  grammarian,  and  if  I  chose 
I  might  enlarge  on  the  historical  importance  of 
grammar  in  general,  and  Greek  grammar  in 
particular.  It  was  a  point  of  grammatical  con- 
cord that  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  Civil  War 
— "  United  States  are,"  said  one,  "  United 
States  is,"  said  another;  and  a  whimsical 
scholar  of  my  acquaintance  used  to  maintain 
that  the  ignorance  of  Greek  idiom  that 
brought  about  the  mistranslation  "  Men  and 
brethren  "  (Acts  ii,  29)  is  responsible  for 
the  humanitarian  cry,  "  Am  I  not  a  man  and 
a  brother?  "  which  made  countless  thousands 
mourn.  I  myself  have  proved  to  my  own  sat- 
isfaction that  the  personal  accountability  for 
belief  about  which  one  hears  so  much  nowa- 
days is  taught  by  a  Greek  negative,  and  that 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  17 

Schopenhauer's  system  is  implicit  in  the  only 
true  doctrine  of  the  Greek  accusative.   Do  you 
wonder  then  that  I  am  panoplied  against  the 
bird-bolts  that  are  aimed  at  grammar? 
But  this  is  not  the  time  for 

the  delighted  spirit 
To  bathe  in  fiery  baud's  or  to  reside 
In  thrilling  regions  of  thick-ribbed  ei's. 

And  fully  aware  of  the  unpopularity  of  gram- 
mar and  grammarians,  I  shall  not  hold  forth 
professedly  on  the  Glory  of  the  Imperfect,  to 
borrow  the  title  of  a  famous  discourse  of  Pro- 
fessor Palmer  of  Harvard,  and  the  Inexpres- 
sibility  of  the  Aorist,  but  my  talk  will  be  a 
grammarian's  talk  for  all  that,  and  it  will  be 
a  Grecian's  talk  for  all  that,  a  talk  impossible 
for  anyone  but  a  grammarian,  for  anyone  but 
a  Grecian. 

But  the  subject?  If  I  could  only  have 
evaded  the  dire  necessity  of  a  subject !  Oh  !  for 
the  bygone  days  of  prolusions  and  diatribes. 
But  the  world  will  not  allow  a  man  to  do  as 
I  would  fain  do.  How  I  should  love  to  diva- 
gate over  the  field  of  my  favorite  study,  and 


1 8  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

after  fetching  up  at  the  end  of  my  ramble,  call 
that  end  my  goal !  But  I  promise  you  there 
will  be  a  certain  unity  in  my  diversities,  a  cer- 
tain coherence  in  my  incoherences,  and  if  there 
is  not,  you  must  blame  your  committee,  to 
whom  I  submitted  a  list  of  subjects,  begging 
them  to  select  one  which  they  thought  most 
suitable  to  the  occasion  and  the  audience.  But 
they  declined  to  share  the  responsibility,  and 
perhaps  after  all  it  was  as  well. 

Anatole  France  has  said  that  when  a  man 
undertakes  to  talk  about  literature,  he  is  really 
talking  about  himself,  and  that  the  critic  ought 
to  preface  his  discourse  by  some  such  phrase 
as:  "Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  about  to 
speak  of  myself,  apropos  of  Shakespeare  or 
Racine  or  Pascal  or  Goethe."  And  so,  no  mat- 
ter what  my  subject  may  have  been,  it  would 
doubtless  have  been  steeped  in  my  personality, 
just  as  Dante's  Inferno,  Purgatorio  and  Para- 
diso  were  stages  of  his  own  life;  and  so 
whatever  the  title  may  have  been,  whether 
I  had  borrowed  it  from  my  youthful  essay 
on  the  Necessity  of  the   Classics,   published 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  19 

fifty-four  years  ago,  or  from  my  latest  out- 
givings on  the  same  subject,  The  Persist- 
ence of  the  Greek  Element  in  Modern  Cul- 
ture, the  subject  of  one  of  my  Richmond 
lectures  three  years  ago;  whether  I  had  asked 
you  to  study  with  me  Aristophanes  in  the 
light  of  the  twentieth  century  after  Christ, 
or  the  Greek  pettifogger  in  the  darkness 
of  the  fourth  century  before  Christ;  whether 
I  had  attempted  to  play  the  part  of  the  fabled 
tettix  that  supplied  the  lost  chord  of  the 
citharist's  lyre,  and  had  undertaken  to  des- 
cant on  the  charm  of  Greek  lyric  poetry,  all 
subjects  that  I  have  treated  in  printed  or 
oral  discourse,  still  the  dominant  theme  would 
have  been  the  same,  the  life  and  the  studies 
of  your  lecturer,  the  studies  which  have  been 
the  life  of  the  old  learner  who  has  reached 
the  time  when  he  must  say  with  Petrarch: 
Altro  diletto  che' mparar  non  provo,  "  Other 
delight  than  learning  have  I  none."  There 
is  nothing  that  I  can  say  about  Greek  that 
does  not  recall  some  stage  of  study,  some 
experience   of   life,    from   the   days   when   I 


20  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

Stood  at  my  father's  knee  and  spelt  out  the 
Gospel  according  to  St.  John,  little  suspect- 
ing the  difficulty  that  haunts  the  very  first 
verse,  and  the  somewhat  later  days  when,  a 
lad  of  less  than  twelve,  I  translated  the  so- 
called  Anacreon  Into  English  rhyme,  un- 
troubled by  questions  of  higher  criticism 
and  pagan  morality,  down  to  the  present 
hour,  when  my  favorite  diversion  Is  the 
chemical  analysis  of  Greek  style.  This, 
then,  Is  the  unity  of  which  I  spoke,  an  un- 
blushing unity.  I  am  taking  for  granted  that 
I  am  still  alive,  and  that  because  I  live,  that 
.which  I  work  In  lives  also,  a  daring  assump- 
tion, of  which  I  may  fail  to  bring  satisfactory 
proof,  so  that  my  talks  on  the  Vitality  of 
Greek  Studies  in  America  may  only  show  that 
said  Greek  studies  have  a  name  that  they 
live  and  are  dead. 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  follow  the  example 
of  an  eloquent  friend  of  mine  who  has  been 
making  a  plea  for  Greek.  It  would  be  hope- 
less to  attempt  to  vie  with  Professor  Shorey 
In  richness  of  style  and  wealth  of  Illustration. 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  21 

I  have  no  plea  to  offer  for  Greek,  and  when 
some  years  ago  a  French  minister  of  instruc- 
tion hailed  the  coming  day  when  no  one  would 
learn  Greek  except  those  who  had  to  teach  it, 
I  smiled,  for  it  is  twenty  years  since  I  had  a 
vision 

which  gave  my  spirit  strength  to  sweep 
Adown  the  stream  of  time, 

and  in  the  strength  of  that  vision  I  evoked 
in  a  public  discourse  the  image  of  the  last 
old  woman,  trousered  or  untrousered,  who 
should  occupy  the  chair  of  the  Diotimus 
mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  this  lecture. 
I  am  not  going  to  plead  for  Greek,  even  if  it 
were  only  for  the  Grecians  in  this  audience; 
for  if  there  is  one  thing  that  a  classical  scholar 
cares  less  to  read  than  another,  it  is  a  plea 
for  classical  scholarship;  if  there  is  one  thing 
that  a  Grecian  would  fain  be  excused  from 
hearing,  it  is  an  impassioned  oration  in  behalf 
of  Greek  studies.  For  every  classical  scholar 
has  himself  had  to  plead  for  classical  schol- 
arship, and  every  Hellenist  has  lifted  up  his 
voice  in  behalf  of  Hellenism.    We  are  aweary 


23  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

of  our  own  arguments,  our  own  illustrations; 
and  only  a  short  time  since,  being  called  on  for 
some  confirmatory  remarks  on  an  orthodox 
exposition  of  the  value  of  the  Greek  language 
and  the  Greek  literature,  I  felt  stirred  to  pro- 
test against  the  whole  thing.  If  the  study  is 
doomed,  I  said,  let  it  die.  Living  is  the  test  of 
vitality,  for  that  is  the  sum  and  substance  of 
pragmatism,  the  latest  phase  of  what  I  may 
venture  to  call  truistic  philosophy — truistic 
philosophy  to  match  altruistic  ethics,  of  which 
one  hears  so  much,  which  one  practices  so 
little.  If  classical  culture  has  outlived  its  use- 
fulness; if  its  teachers  are  squeaking  and  gib- 
bering ghosts  and  not  real  men,  let  in  the 
light,  turn  on  the  current  and  have  done  with 
it.  So  I  am  not  to  make  a  speech  pro  domo, 
for  my  house,  which  is  my  castle,  my  fortress. 
Everybody  knows  every  redoubt,  every  salient. 
The  gabions  are  all  counted,  and  the  fascines 
all  numbered,  and  the  chevaux  de  frise  all 
roughshod,  and  the  fosse  all  flooded  with 
ditchwater  eloquence.  This  then  is  to  be  no 
vindication  of  Greek  as  a  study.   Call  it  an  ex- 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  23 

emplification  of  Greek  as  a  study  and  I  will 
not  protest  so  strenuously,  Invidious  as  It  may 
be  to  set  one's  self  up  as  an  example  of  any- 
thing, especially  when  critics  have  proved 
triumphantly  that  I  have  not  profited  by  my 
lifelong  studies,  and  that  the  chaste  reserve  of 
my  classic  models  has  not  properly  regulated 
my  style.  Indeed,  following  Whistler's  ex- 
ample, I  have  made  an  acanthology  of  strict- 
ures on  my  literary  performances,  and  the 
motto  of  the  collection,  with  which  I  regale 
myself  In  lonely  hours,  I  have  taken  from  Ben 
Jonson's  formidable  list  In  the  Preface  to 
Volpone,  "  Such  impropriety  of  phrase,  such 
plenty  of  solecisms,  such  dearth  of  sense,  so 
bold  prolepses,  so  racked  metaphors."  But 
any  style  is  better  than  a  dead  style,  and  the 
style  of  some  of  my  critics  reminds  me  of 
Badebec,  wife  of  Gargantua,  who  was  "  the 
most  this  and  the  most  that,"  but  she  was 
dead  all  the  same.  It  cannot  be  emphasized 
too  much  that  this  thing  of  classical  re- 
serve, this  reiterated  ne  quid  ntmis,  may  be 
overdone.     Many  of  the  classics  themselves 


24  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

lack  classical  reserve.  The  editors  of  Pin- 
dar have  most  of  them  ceased  to  vindicate 
Pindar's  style.  In  the  matter  of  meta- 
phor, says  Schroeder,  he  is  still  "  crude  and 
unclarified."  But  what  can  be  more  "  crude 
and  unclarified  "  than  the  following  passage, 
which  I  take  from  the  writings  of  Mark 
Pattison,  the  erudite  biographer  of  Casau- 
bon,  a  man  steeped  in  every  kind  of  lore, 
classical  and  other?  "  Even  at  this  day  a 
country  squire  or  rector  in  landing  with  his 
cuh  under  his  wing  in  Oxford  finds  himself 
very  much  at  sea."  Since  reading  this  I  have 
given  myself  very  little  concern  about  Pindar's 
mixed  metaphors  or  mine. 

A  vindication  of  Greek,  then,  is  not  the  thing 
to  be  talked  about,  not  for  those  who  have 
already  made  Greek  their  special  line  of  work, 
and  most  assuredly  not  for  those  who  have 
decided  to  give  up  that  of  the  many  things 
that  one  must  give  up  in  this  universe  of  pick- 
ings and  choosings,  I  am  not  here  to  convert 
anybody.  I  come  simply  as  an  old  student  to 
talk  to  younger  students,  who  either  love  the 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  25 


work  that  I  love,  or  else  have  caught  enough 
of  the  university  spirit  to  be  tolerant  of  others' 
work,  if  not  to  be  in  sympathy  with  it.  Greek, 
then,  is  a  postulate  not  further  to  be  disputed. 
The  problem  is  not  whether  Greek  is  worth 
while,  but  Greek  being  given,  what  is  the  best 
way  of  connecting  it  with  the  life  of  to-day? 
For  the  teacher,  for  the  learner,  the  problem 
is  how  to  teach,  how  to  learn  Greek  so  as  to 
make  it  a  part,  or,  if  you  choose,  recognize 
it  as  a  part  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  life 
of  our  time.  This  is  the  form  that  almost 
every  problem  takes  nowadays.  It  is  the  sum 
of  our  religious  strivings  how  to  transmute  the 
Way  and  the  Truth  into  the  Life,  of  our  intel- 
lectual endeavors  how  to  transmute  Method 
and  Fact  into  Force.  The  ornamental  stage  of 
civilization  is  earlier  than  the  utilitarian,  and  I 
have  no  quarrel,  mark  you,  with  the  ornamen- 
tal stage.  I  believe  in  rhetoric,  but  it  must  be 
rhetoric  in  the  service  of  truth;  not  jingle,  but 
tocsin.  The  fair  fagade  must  be  the  growth  of 
the  living  rooms.  The  classics  are  an  accom- 
plishment, but  not  a  mere  accomplishment.  To 
3 


26  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 


be  up  in  mythology,  to  make  elegant  classical 
allusions,  to  be  ready  with  apt  quotations,  to 
have  a  fine  stock  of  emblemata,  of  which  one 
reads  so  much  in  Cicero's  Second  Verrine, 
movable  figures  that  you  can  screw  on  to 
heighten  the  effect  of  the  plated  ware  of  after- 
dinner  oratory,  all  that  belongs  to  the  older 
period,  just  as  to  be  up  in  theological  subtle- 
ties, to  make  happy  or  unhappy  Scriptural 
allusions,  to  be  ready  at  any  time  with  a  proof 
text  or  a  Biblical  parallel  belongs  to  an  older 
type  of  religionism.  Both  have  their  advan- 
tages, neither  is  to  be  lightly  abandoned,  and 
yet  neither,  I  venture  to  say,  marks  the  full 
current  of  this  twentieth  century. 

Now  this  necessity  of  vitalizing  classical 
study  is  felt  everywhere,  and  due  praise  must 
be  given  to  the  honest  efforts  made  in  this 
direction,  though  many  of  them  are  mere  re- 
vivals of  abandoned  experiments,  so  slow  are 
men  to  learn  from  history.  To  be  sure,  the 
readiness  with  which  a  man  can  vitalize  his 
subject  is  something  that  varies  with  the  indi- 
viduality.   Some  men  can  pass  from  the  morn- 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  27 

ing  newspaper  or  the  midnight  novel  straight 
to  the  lecture  on  Greek  literature,  or  to  the 
investigation  of  grammatical  phenomena,  and 
feel  that  the  life  is  one;  others  have  to  put  on 
mental  bands  and  gowns  in  order  to  present 
the  gospel  of  Hellenism,  as  Buffon  is  said 
to  have  put  on  court  dress  before  he  paid  his 
respects  to  Nature ;  others  regard  a  Greek 
joke  as  a  sacred  thing,  not  lightly  to  be 
laughed  at.  In  fact,  there  is  no  more  pitiable 
object  than  a  man  born  to  an  honest  slow- 
ness of  vision  and  expression,  who  is  goaded 
by  the  requirements  of  the  age  into  being 
lively;  your  Goodman  Dull  who  will  fain 
be  as  nimble-witted  as  Moth.  The  students 
soon  see  through  this  false  liveliness,  are  irri- 
tated, are  repelled  by  it,  and  prefer  in  the  long 
run  the  honest,  steady  bore  of  a  methodical 
wimble  to  the  tumultuous  prodding  of  a 
would-be  live  teacher.  We  are  supposed  to 
be  a  race  of  humorists,  and  American  jokes  I 
have  found  to  be  in  great  demand  in  the  com- 
mon rooms  and  combination  rooms  of  Eng- 
lish universities;  and  I  am  afraid  that  this  rep- 


28  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

utation  has  had  a  bad  effect  on  the  style  of 
American  lecturers,  who  seem  to  think  that 
no  matter  what  the  subject,  they  must  vindi- 
cate their  right  to  a  share  in  the  national  sense 
of  humor.  They  are  not  very  Greek  in  this 
unfailing  funniness;  there  is  no  very  good 
Greek  equivalent  for  "  fun  "  ;  indeed,  it  is  hard, 
it  is  almost  impossible,  to  restore  for  the  out- 
sider the  volatilized  savor  of  Attic  salt.  One 
has  to  create  an  atmosphere  for  the  inhalation 
of  the  delicate  perfume.  The  mocking  epi- 
grams of  the  Greek  Anthology,  "  some  of 
which,"  says  Mr.  Mackail,  "  have  an  Irish  in- 
consequence, some  the  grave  and  logical  mon- 
strosity of  American  humour,"  belong  for  the 
most  part  to  the  age  of  the  decline.  One  of  the 
most  American  of  Greek  writers,  Lucian,  was 
not  a  Greek,  and,  as  Karl  Friedrich  Hermann 
said  in  one  of  his  lectures,  nothing  in  lit- 
erature is  sadder  than  the  spectacle  of  the 
poor  old  jester,  the  poor  old  rhetorician,  scrap- 
ing the  dried  colors  out  of  the  bottom  of  his 
paintpot  to  make  a  daub  withal.  Still,  no 
matter  what  form  the  message  takes,  sober  or 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  29 

gay,  it  is  unquestionably  the  demand  of  the 
time  that  whatever  study  we  engage  in  be 
made  a  part  of  our  life.  In  natural  science 
the  laboratory,  once  sacred  to  the  teacher,  is 
open  to  the  pupil,  nay,  he  is  compelled  to 
come  in.  In  my  boyhood  there  was  nothing 
but  a  text-book  with  a  few  pictures,  and  a 
posing  demonstrator,  who,  when  he  succeeded, 
had  the  air  of  an  adroit  conjurer,  when  he 
failed,  the  attitude  of  a  baffled  rat-catcher. 
The  student  now  makes  his  own  vacuum,  if 
he  does  not  bring  it  with  him,  kills  his  own 
small  deer,  finds  himself  wanting  in  his  own 
balance,  handles  and  feels  of  the  body  of  life 
itself.  And  so  in  philology.  The  student 
gathers  his  own  material,  works  out  his  own 
results,  acquires  the  precious  conviction  that 
he  too  is  the  master  of  a  small  domain,  lord 
of  one  lizard,  as  Juvenal  has  it. 

Est  aliquid,  quocumque  loco,  quocumque  recessu 
Unius  sese  dominum  fecisse  lacertae. 

To  be  sure,  this  method  has  its  dangers,  and 
men  have  been  unwise  enough  to  apply  it  to 
elementary  instruction  in  language,  to  apply 


30  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

It  before  the  proper  stage  is  reached.  So  a 
fashion  has  been  started  of  making  young 
boys  abstract  the  rules  of  grammar  from  ex- 
amples already  given  in  the  textbook.  It  is 
the  so-called  inductive  method,  a  perfect  jug- 
gle, a  transparent  juggle,  one  would  think, 
for  the  examples  have  already  been  prepared 
and  the  rule  lies  implicit  in  them.  This  is 
botanizing  in  a  hortus  siccus,  not  even  in  a 
hortus  conclusus,  much  less  in  meadows  trim 
with  daisies  pied,  but  even  this  shows  the  im- 
perative demand  of  life.  Thoroughly  vital 
and  healthful,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  ever 
increasing  demand  that  the  written  word  be- 
come the  spoken  word,  and  youths  are 
trained  more  and  more  in  the  immediate 
understanding  of  the  classic  texts.  Where 
language  is  concerned,  the  eye  can  no  longer 
say  to  the  ear  and  to  the  tongue,  I  have  no 
need  of  you.  Nay,  tongue  and  ear  say  to  the 
eye,  We  are  first  in  the  domain  of  language. 
You  are  but  the  registrar  of  the  figure,  not 
the  revealer  of  the  soul. 

There  are  more  ways  than  one  of  making 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  31 

the  life  of  Greece  our  own.  I  must  limit  my 
view  to  three — three  channels  of  life — to  use 
the  somewhat  affected  language  of  my  pro- 
gramme. 

The  life  of  Greece  and  things  Greek  may 
be  considered  as  continuous. 

It  may  be  considered  as  a  renewal,  a  moral, 
intellectual,  spiritual  reproduction  with  which 
our  modern  life,  our  American  life,  has  to  do, 
both  in  contrast  and  coincidence,  an  inde- 
feasible exemplar. 

Or  we  may  frankly  seek  in  the  life  of 
ancient  Greece  analogies  to  our  own  life, 
national  and  human;  not  continuity,  but  one- 
ness; not  the  passing  of  the  torch,  but  the 
unity  of  the  central  fire,  of  the  central  hearth. 
And  so  we  say  with  the  poet  who  represents 
the  actuality  of  the  present  time  as  does 
no  other  poet  of  the  day,  we  say  with  Kipling: 

The  thranite  and  the  thalamite  are  pressures  low  and  high, 

And  where  three  hundred  blades  bit  white,  the  twin  pro- 
pellers fly; 

The  god  that  hailed,  the  keel  that  sailed,  are  changed 
beyond  recall, 

But  the  robust  and  brass-bound  man,  he  is  not  changed 
at  all. 


32  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

The  first  way  requires  favoring  circum- 
stances, such  as  in  the  nature  of  things  can  be 
the  lot  of  few,  although  with  increasing  facil- 
ities of  travel,  the  vision  of  Greece  is  vouch- 
safed to  a  large  proportion  of  those  who  pro- 
fess and  call  themselves  Grecians.  To  him 
who  has  eyes  to  see,  that  vision  is  a  transcend- 
ent delight;  an  indefinite  increment  of  power 
to  him  who  has  the  secret  of  Greek  life. 

The  second  requires  a  breadth  and  a  depth 
of  knowledge,  a  span  of  intellectual  grasp,  a 
wing  of  poetic  imagination  such  as  we  demand 
of  the  ideal  scholar.  This  ideal,  this  hope- 
less ideal,  if  you  choose  to  call  it  so,  dom- 
inated all  the  studies  of  my  youth.  To-day 
the  note  is  rather  that  of  renunciation,  and 
one  hears  the  piping  of  the  bird  in  the  East- 
ern tale:  "  Seek  not  the  unattainable." 

The  third  method  appeals  to  the  homely 
experience  of  every  day,  and  seeks  to  find  an- 
alogies on  every  hand,  parallels  more  easily 
discovered  perhaps  by  those  who  know  neither 
line  very  well.  It  is  this  desire  of  life  that 
prompts  transfusion  rather  than  translation, 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  33 

that  endues  the  whiteness  of  antiquity  with 
modern  coloring,  that  substitutes  high  relief 
for  low  relief.  As  a  craving  for  life  it  is 
fairly  defensible,  if  not  wholly  justifiable; 
with  our  blunter  senses  we  must  exaggerate 
in  order  to  see,  and  if  we  cannot  feel  our  life 
in  every  limb,  our  hands  may  tingle  and  our 
feet  may  quiver  at  the  music  of  the  olden  time. 

Now  all  these  methods  I  have  appropri- 
ated in  the  measure  of  my  opportunities,  the 
measure  of  my  susceptibilities,  and  I  propose 
to  say  a  few  words  about  each  of  them. 

The  first  method  calls  up  a  stage  in  my  own 
training,  for  the  first  real  teacher  of  Greek  I 
ever  had  was  a  man  thoroughly  penetrated 
with  the  sense  of  historic  continuity,  a  man 
who  deplored  the  outcome  of  the  Renascence 
and  the  victory  of  Latin  over  Greek.  He  was 
the  tutor  of  the  first  King  of  Greece,  and  while 
he  yielded  to  the  current  of  the  time,  so  far 
as  to  write  in  Latin  and  in  German,  his  cry 
was  a  return  to  the  ancient  language.  He 
wrote  the  life  of  Lysias  In  Greek,  he  called 
himself  Phrasikles  Instead  of  the  honest  Ger- 


34  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

man  Franz,  and  gave  Greek  names  to  all  his 
pupils,  so  that  I  figured  for  the  winter  semes- 
ter of  1 850-1 85  I  as  Chrysobrachion.  When 
Ritschl  went  to  Rome,  he  eagerly  sought  the 
acquaintance  of  this  remarkable  scholar  with 
his  unequalled  virtuosity  in  speaking  ancient 
Greek,  and  Franz's  Schola  Graeca  at  the 
University  of  Berlin  was  conducted  in  that 
tongue.  Not  a  brilliant  success  that  Schola 
Graeca,  but  it  influenced  my  whole  life  and 
my  whole  teaching.  But  the  historical  con- 
tinuity that  Franz  tried  to  restore  is  an 
impossibility.  Modern  Greek,  he  used  to 
say  passionately,  is  a  rag;  it  is  not  a  fibre 
out  of  which  a  new  language  can  be  made. 
We  must  have  the  seamless  garment  of  the 
ancient  time  back  again.  But  that  is  an 
idle  dream,  and  since  Franz's  day  the  quar- 
rel between  those  who  would  maintain  the 
present  state  of  things  with  its  threefold  layer 
of  language,  the  language  of  the  press,  the 
language  of  higher  society,  the  language  of 
the  people,  and  those  who  urge  and  urge  tem- 
pestuously  the    claims   of   what   is   the   real 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  35 

speech  of  the  Hellenes  of  to-day,  one  party 
appealing  to  history,  the  other  to  the  life  of 
the  land — to  the  example  of  the  Romance  lan- 
guages— this  quarrel  has  burned  of  late  years 
with  a  blood-red  flam.e,  and  I  will  not  thrust 
my  hand  into  that  seven  times  heated  furnace 
now.  "  The  language  generally  spoken  to- 
day in  the  towns,"  says  Professor  Hatzidakis, 
"  differs  less  from  the  common  language  of 
Polybios  than  the  last  differs  from  the  lan- 
guage of  Homer."  But  Professor  Hatzida- 
kis is  a  champion  of  the  archaizers,  and  he 
goes  too  far.  There  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  be- 
tween any  kind  of  ancient  Greek  and  the  mod- 
ern Greek  washing  list.  The  semi-Byzantine 
Greek  of  the  newspaper  which  any  Greek 
scholar  can  read  is  not  a  spoken  language,  and 
does  not  become  a  spoken  language  because  a 
few  professors  in  academic  halls  undertake  to 
talk  it,  and  a  language  that  is  not  to  be  spoken 
is  a  song  that  is  not  to  be  sung.  Bikelas  used 
to  maintain  that  the  difference  between  the 
stratifications  in  Shakespeare  was  as  great  as 
that  between  the  stratifications  in  Greek,  but 


36  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

Bikelas  held  a  brief  for  his  own  translation 
of  Shakespeare.  To  be  sure,  even  in  Greek 
as  it  is  spoken,  not  the  sham  newspaper,  not 
the  sham  academic  lingo,  there  are  many  sur- 
vivals. To  hear  ti  pdtho  from  a  modern 
mouth  is  as  if  Aristophanes  rose  from  the 
dead.  One  misses  from  the  modern  Greek 
vocabulary  the  ancient  words  for  "  wine  " 
and  "water"  and  "bread,"  but  "milk" 
abides,  and  it  was  to  me  as  the  milk  of  Para- 
dise when  I  was  wakened  one  spring  day  in 
Nauplia  by  the  street  cry  of  gala.  Perhaps, 
if  it  had  been  my  privilege  to  be  long  resident 
in  Greece,  I  should  have  fallen  under  the  spell, 
and  as  it  is,  in  spite  of  what  I  have  just  said 
about  the  artificiality  of  the  Greek  that  is  the 
medium  of  written  communication  throughout 
the  Levant,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  crusade 
against  it,  originated  by  a  party  among  the 
Greeks  themselves,  will  be  successful  in  any 
time  to  which  we  may  confidently  look  for- 
ward, nor  should  I  personally  welcome  the 
success.  As  I  said  some  years  ago,  "  In  the 
perpetual   struggle   between   the   wide-awake 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  37 

tongue  of  the  people  and  the  dormant  lan- 
guage of  the  books,  the  classical  scholar  is  on 
the  side  of  the  sleeping  beauty — one  does  not 
call  it  the  dead  language — and  his  heart  is 
touched  when  the  patriotic  archaizer  apostro- 
phizes the  ancient  speech  in  the  language  of 
the  disciple:  To  whom  shall  we  go?  Thou 
hast  the  words  of  eternal  life." 

But  in  talks  like  these  on  the  quickening 
of  Greek  studies,  it  is  not  necessary  to  insist 
on  what  is  evident,  that  the  way  cannot  lie 
through  modern  Greek,  and  that  a  visit  to 
Greece  can  never  become  a  regular  com- 
plement to  the  collegiate  course,  though  it  is 
justly  demanded  more  and  more  emphatically 
for  those  who  intend  to  make  themselves  pro- 
fessors of  Greek.  True,  we  need  not  expect 
mountains  and  marvels  from  these  tourists. 
Men  always  bring  back  what  they  took  with 
them.  After  all,  the  kingdom  of  Hellenism 
is  within  the  man,  and  there  are  those  who 
return  from  Greece  not  much  more  enlight- 
ened than  the  valise  that  bears  the  label  of 
that  admirable   hotel,   the   Grande   Bretagne 


38  HELLAS   AND   HESPERL4 

of  Constitution  Square.  These  are  they  who 
have  learned  too  well  the  favorite  modern 
Greek  phrase,  dhen  pirazi,  "  It  makes  no  dif- 
ference." But  it  is  a  great  opportunity,  and 
though  I  regret  that  my  fleeting  vision  came 
to  me  late  In  life,  still  more  than  twelve  years 
of  remembrance  have  been  accorded  to  me, 
and  my  pulse  quickens  as  I  think  of  my  sixty 
short  days  in  Greece. 

Of  course,  the  Hellenist  who  has  lived 
in  the  Greece  of  to-day  has  not  only  the 
local  sense  of  continuity,  but  there  are  many 
survivals  in  the  actual  life  of  the  people 
that  give  vitality  to  the  written  page;  and, 
apart  from  this,  there  is  one  range  of  studies 
in  which  we  can  speak  of  a  continuous  life. 
Greek  life  is  continuous  in  its  monuments. 
Archaeology  comes  not  from  palaios,  which 
refers  to  lapse  of  time,  but  from  archaios, 
which  refers  to  point  of  origin,  and  the 
science  of  archaeology  lays  one  hand  on  the 
past,  the  other  on  the  present,  and  establishes 
a  current  that  thrills  through  every  fibre.  No 
one  can  tell  how  much  sensitive  surface  he  has 


THE    CHANNELS    OF   LIFE  39 

until  he  comes  Into  contact  with  the  survivals 
of  antique  life  on  classic  soil.  Even  In  the 
cemetery  of  a  museum,  dissociated  from 
the  life  of  the  land,  there  are  Inscriptions  that 
speak  to  us,  there  are  stones  out  of  which 
start  the  living  children  of  Hellas  and  Rome, 
and  I  am  glad  that  I  was  reared  In  a  school 
that  counted  study  of  ancient  art  as  a  prime 
condition  of  any  just  estimate  of  antiquity, 
I  am  happy  to  have  had,  If  but  a  glimpse,  at 
the  end  of  my  career,  of  the  land  about  which 
my  thoughts  had  revolved  for  so  many  years. 
Such  vitality  as  I  have  has  been  fed  by  the 
vision  of  Greek  nature  and  Greek  art.  I  have 
actually  tried  to  trace  the  correlation  of  liter- 
ary art,  of  which  I  know  something,  and 
plastic  art,  in  which  I  must  be  content  to  be  a 
learner.  There  are  hints  enough  in  the  ancient 
rhetoricians  themselves.  The  early  artists  in 
prose  are  as  the  early  artists  In  wood,  in  stone, 
in  bronze.  In  color.  The  composition  of  the 
sentence  follows  the  types  of  the  ancient  wall. 
The  epos  is  as  the  frieze — an  old  comparison, 
the  ode  as  the  metope,  the  drama  as  a  pedi- 


40  HELLAS   AND    HESPERL4 

mental  group.  And  as  for  the  vision  of 
Greece  itself,  that  abides  for  me  as  the  il- 
luminated background  of  every  study  of  art 
and  life,  and  Greek  poetry  is  steeped  in  the 
amethystine  hues  of  the  garland  of  mountains 
that  encompasses  Athens,  the  Athens  that 
still  is. 

I  now  pass  from  the  consideration  of  the 
first  method,  and  if  the  continuity  of  Greek 
life  connects  itself  for  me  with  the  memory 
of  one  teacher,  the  second  method,  which  may 
be  called  the  idealistic  method,  connects  itself 
with  another.  As  I  am  not  ashamed  of  being 
classed  with  the  alphabetic  grammarians,  so 
I  do  not  underrate  my  own  vocation  as  a 
teacher.  For  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
history  of  most  men  is  to  be  found  in  the  suc- 
cession of  their  teachers,  but  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  function  of  the  teacher  is 
mainly  the  introduction  to  the  love  or  the 
loves  of  one's  life.  The  lessons  are  lost,  the 
love  abides,  and  love  is  life.  It  is  fairly  safe 
to  say  that  there  is  no  great  genius  of  mod- 
ern times  whose  career  is  so  well  known  as 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  41 

Goethe's,  and  the  Eternal  Feminine  stands  at 
every  sinuosity  of  his  path.  You  cannot  dis- 
sociate Dante  from  Beatrice,  and  if  Beatrice 
was  a  personification,  personifications  are  the 
most  potent  form  of  the  Eternal  Feminine. 
The  ideal  becomes  the  passion  of  one's  life, 
and  one  says  to  the  Ideal,  Tu  ricca,  tu  con  pace, 
tu  con  senno.  She  brings  wealth,  not  what 
men  call  wealth,  It  Is  true,  she  brings  peace, 
she  brings  "  sense."  As  I  look  back,  I  see 
more  plainly  than  ever  that  the  second  source 
of  life,  to  which  I  have  referred,  became  for 
me  the  dominant  motive  of  all  my  work.  That 
mistress  of  mine  bore  a  lumbering  name — 
Altertumswissenschaft — Imperfectly  rendered 
by  "  Science  of  Antiquity."  But  then  you  can- 
not translate  "  Gretchen,"  you  can  only  love 
her.  The  man  who  introduced  me  to  her  was 
a  quiet  old  Privy  Councillor,  not  calculated, 
one  should  say,  to  Inspire  enthusiasm.  He 
was  sixty-five  years  old,  bent  with  what  is 
called  the  scholar's  stoop — a  most  unneces- 
sary thing  at  sixty-five — a  man  of  shuffling 
gait,  of  slow  and  deliberate  utterance,  who 
4 


42  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

read  his  lectures  from  a  yellow  "  heft  "  to 
which  were  attached  supplementary  strips  of 
paper,  and  yet  his  teaching  made  a  passionate 
classicist  out  of  an  amateurish  student  of  liter- 
ature. Boeckh  was  a  great  master,  the  great- 
est living  master  of  Hellenic  studies,  and  if  I 
became  after  a  fashion  a  Hellenist,  it  was  due 
not  merely  to  the  catalytic  effect  of  his  pres- 
ence, but  to  the  orbed  completeness  of  the  ideal 
he  evoked,  and  though  the  fifty  odd  years  that 
have  elapsed  since  I  sate  in  his  lecture-rooms 
have  witnessed  the  elimination  of  many  of 
the  results  of  his  studies,  the  human  results 
abide.  Alas !  for  my  poor  old  flame — Alter- 
tumswissenschaft.  Her  fate  reminds  me  of 
a  story  of  Callot  Hoffmann's,  which  tells  of 
a  man  who  fell  in  love  with  a  fair  form.  The 
man  was  mad,  and  the  fair  form  was  a  lay- 
figure.  And  so  we  have  been  told  of  late 
years  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  science 
of  antiquity,  that  our  goddess  is  merely  a 
jointed  doll,  each  part  of  it  valuable  as  so 
much  wood,  and  that  is  all.  There  is  a  cycle 
of  studies,  no  celestial  orb.     But  if  it  was  an 


/ 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  43 

illusion,  it  was  an  illusion  that  stood  me  in 
good  stead,  and  if  I  have  ever  brought  any 
vital  force  for  myself  and  others  to  the  study 
of  the  classics,  it  has  been  through  the  belief 
cherished  from  early  manhood  in  the  correla- 
tion of  all  the  various  departments  of  study. 
Every  manifestation  of  national  life  has  its 
answering  manifestation  in  every  other.  This 
is  the  bread  of  life  and  the  water  of  life  that 
have  sustained  me  as  they  have  sustained  oth- 
ers through  the  aridities  of  a  wilderness  of 
study,  and  if  that  on  which  my  eyes  have 
gazed  is  not  Plato's  ocean  of  the  beautiful, 
but  a  mirage,  I  thank  God  for  the  mirage. 
There  is  somewhere  an  ocean  of  the  beautiful, 
and  he  who  believes  that  the  spiritual  resur-  ■^ 
rection  of  the  classical  past  is  the  scholar's 
ideal,  will  bring  to  his  work  a  life  that  is  de- 
nied to  him  who  has  no  faith  in  the  scientific 
value  of  the  imagination.  Let  me  repeat  here 
what  I  said  long,  long  since  of  the  great 
scholar  whose  loss  we  are  all  mourning  now, 
Franz  Buecheler:  "  Some  years  ago  I  at- 
tended a  lecture  by  a  great  master.  The  theme 


V. 


44  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

was  the  vanishing  of  weak  vowels  in  Latin. 
Candor  compels  me  to  state  that  although  I 
pride  m.yself  on  being  interested  in  the  m^ost 
uninteresting   things,    I    should   have   chosen 

another  subject  for  a  specimen  lecture 

I  was  much  struck  with  the  tone  in  which  he 
announced  his  subject.  It  was  the  tone  of  a 
man  who  had  seen  the  elements  melt  with 
fervent  heat  and  the  weak  vowels  vanish  at 
the  sound  of  the  last  trump.  The  tone,  in- 
deed, seemed  entirely  too  pathetic  for  the 
occasion,  but  as  he  went  on  and  marshalled 
the  facts  and  set  in  order  the  long  lines  that 
connected  the  disappearance  of  the  vowel 
with  the  downfall  of  an  empire,  and  great 
linguistic,  great  moral,  great  historical  laws 
marched  in  stately  procession  before  the  vision 
of  the  student,  the  airy  vowels  that  had 
flitted  into  the  Nowhere  seemed  to  be  the  lost 
soul  of  Roman  life;  and  the  Latin  language, 
Roman  literature  and  Roman  history  were 
clothed  with  a  new  meaning."  It  is  true  that 
the  scholar  of  to-day,  like  the  scientific  man 
of   to-day,    must   be    a    specialist.     A    great 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  45 

teacher,  one  to  whose  living  presence  I  owe  a 
great  deal,  one  whom  I  love  to  recall  in  his 
flashing  prime,  has  said:  Enthusiasm  abides 
only  in  specialization.  Rightly  interpreted, 
I  believe  in  this  also.  A  man  who  simply 
raves  about  the  glory  that  was  Greece  and 
the  grandeur  that  was  Rome  is  one  for  whom 
the  real  lover  of  antiquity  has  little  respect. 
A  man  who  exhausts  his  English  vocabulary 
in  extolling  a  Greek  orator  and  mistranslates 
the  passages  that  he  selects  for  especial  com- 
ment is  worse  than  the  infidel  who  does  not  be- 
lieve in  Greek.  It  is  better  to  be  a  doorkeeper 
in  the  house  of  philology  than  to  dwell  in  the 
tents  of  the  rhetorician.  For  the  true  life  is 
due  to  the  consciousness  of  service.  Specializa- 
tion may  readily  degenerate  into  what  is  the 
worst  characteristic  of  our  guild,  specialization 
in  the  interest  of  personal  vanity,  specializa- 
tion which  points  out  the  misplacement  of  a 
decimal  figure,  specialization  which  caws 
about  the  knob  on  the  church  spire,  as  Goethe 
puts  it  in  his  homely  way.  No  truth  stands 
alone,  and  the  most  effective  work  is  done  by 


46  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

those  who  see  all  in  the  one  as  well  as  one  in 
the  all. 

The  scholar  of  this  type  has  life  in  himself, 
and  has  it  so  abundantly  that  he  can  com- 
municate it  to  others.  The  principle  may  be 
mysterious,  it  may  be  indefinable,  but  it  is 
not  less  potent  for  all  that. 

The  third  method  lies  in  the  identification 
of  the  life  of  antiquity  with  the  life  of  our 
own  day.  This  is  not  the  continuity  of  life 
of  which  I  spoke  a  while  ago,  it  is  the  re- 
surgence of  life.  The  study  of  mankind  is 
one  of  perennial  interest.  Witness  the  pas- 
sionate pursuit  of  that  folklore  which  has 
forced  the  English  word  into  the  language  of 
every  civilized  nation  in  the  world.  The  same 
story  recurs  in  the  fables,  the  Marchen  of  the 
most  diverse  nationalities.  "  The  cat  comes 
back;"  the  Marquis  de  Carabas  belongs  to 
yEsop's  litter  of  kittens,  and  there  is  a  keen 
pleasure  in  tracing  this  narrative  and  that 
in  all  its  variants  back  to  its  early  home  in 
Hindustan.  But  the  study  of  anthropology 
shows  that  in  the  wide  circuit  of  the  world 


THE    CHANNELS    OF    LIFE  47 

there  are  customs  and  myths  of  startling  sim- 
ilarity that  can  have  no  historical  connection 
whatever,  and  the  interest  in  these,  as  ulti- 
mately the  Interest  in  the  others,  goes  back  to 
the  manifestation  of  the  workings  of  a  com- 
mon humanity.  So  he  who  has  lived  his  own 
life  most  truly  knows  best  the  life  of  antiquity, 
a  much  less  complex  life,  it  is  said,  than  ours, 
and  therefore  better  suited  for  initial  study, 
as  one  begins  the  study  of  the  human  frame 
with  the  skeleton.  I  am  not  so  certain  of  that. 
In  fact  I  become  less  certain  of  that  and  of 
every  other  axiomatic  statement  the  longer  I 
live.  But  there  is  no  denying  the  charm  of  the 
recurrent  situation,  and  the  same  method  of 
presentation  that  has  made  folklore  so  fas- 
cinating a  study  can  be  made  to  lend  life  to 
instruction  In  the  classics.  The  ancients  rec- 
ognize these  recurrences.  Greek  history  is 
equipped  with  markers  from  Homer,  and  the 
period  in  which  some  of  us  lived  most  in- 
tensely. In  which  we  lived  on  the  highest  plane 
on  which  mortal  man  can  live,  has  its  parallels 
and  its  principles  in  Thucydldes'  History  of 


48  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

the  War  between  the  States.  To  be  sure,  I 
am  going  further  than  that,  and  I  shall  try 
to  show  that  American  conditions  and  Amer- 
ican character  qualify  us  for  the  maintenance 
of  special  kinship  with  the  Greek;  and  kinship 
is  a  magic  word  still  in  this  Old  Dominion. 
When  I  came  as  a  boy  to  Virginia  more  than 
sixty  years  ago,  amazed  at  the  ramifications 
of  the  old  Virginia  families,  I  said:  "This 
is  no  commonwealth,  this  is  a  cousinwealth ;  " 
and  I  am  sure  that  I  shall  be  forgiven  if  I 
attempt  to  trace  our  spiritual  kindred  with  the 
Eternal  Youths  of  History,  as  the  Greeks  have 
been  called,  with  the  sons  of  Javan,  the 
Juvenes  of  a  fanciful  etymology.  This  will 
be  the  theme  of  my  last  lecture.  In  the  next 
I  will  undertake  to  present  some  aspects  of 
the  Greek  language  and  literature  in  their 
relation  to  the  time  that  now  is  and  the  land 
in  which  we  dwell. 


Lecture  II 

GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND 
LITERATURE 

Language,  Literature,  Life — these  were 
the  triple  lines  to  be  traversed  in  three  lec- 
tures, but  like  so  many  of  my  educational 
brethren  who  talk  so  much  about  methods 
that  they  leave  themselves  no  space  to  teach 
anything  else,  I  have  lingered  so  long  in  sur- 
veying the  roads  that  I  shall  not  have  much 
time  in  which  to  build  them,  and  so  I  must 
crowd  what  I  have  to  say  on  both  language 
and  literature  into  the  present  talk.  A  friend 
of  mine,  one  of  the  most  eloquent  advocates 
of  Greek  studies,  and  one  of  the  most  admir- 
able exemplars  of  the  effect  of  Greek,  Pro- 
fessor Butcher — has  written  an  important 
essay  entitled  "  What  we  owe  to  Greece,"  and 
I  might  consider  our  American  language  and 
our  American  literature  from  this  point  of 
view.     But  I  am  not  certain  that  this  would 


50  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

be  the  most  effective  plea  for  Greek.  The 
sentiment  "  Base  is  the  slave  that  pays  "  finds 
an  echo  in  many  hearts,  and  it  has  been  con- 
tended by  high  authority  that  ingratitude,  so 
far  from  indicating  a  low  order  of  character, 
is  the  mark  of  a  highstrung  nature  that  re- 
sents obligation.  Aristotle  explains  why  it  is 
that  we  are  so  much  fonder  of  those  whom 
we  benefit  than  of  those  by  whom  we  are  ben- 
efited, and  I  have  asked  myself  whether  the 
better  sort  of  Greek  teachers  do  not  in  their 
hearts  feel  that  the  Greeks  ought  to  be  very 
much  obliged  to  them.  Greek  jests  are  very 
limited  in  quantity  and  quality.  The  phonetic 
purity  of  the  language  is  fatal  to  the  growth 
of  puns.  It  often  takes  two  words  to  make 
one  pun  in  Greek,  like  the  fabled  trousers 
that  took  two  gentlemen  to  show  the  pattern, 
and  puns  of  this  kind  are  paraded  over  and 
over  again  by  rhetorician  after  rhetorician. 
The  citizens  of  Hamburg  made  little  clubs 
of  four  to  understand  one  joke  of  Rivarol, 
and  so  a  whole  company  of  professors  is  some- 
times needed  to  elucidate  one  Greek  jest;  and 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        51 

your  American  teacher  of  Greek  literature 
sometimes  groans  at  the  necessity  of  labori- 
ously expounding  Greek  facetiousness  instead 
of  tossing  off  his  own  admirable  witticisms  to 
his  own  greater  glory  and  the  greater  delecta- 
tion of  his  audience.  And  I  know  whereof 
I  affirm,  because  I  have  spent  much  oil  and 
toil  on  the  Wit  and  Humor  of  Aristophanes. 
But  I  am  not  going  to  dwell  on  Aristophanes' 
obligations  to  me.  I  only  wish  to  say  a  word 
in  defence  of  my  objections  to  being  under 
obligations  to  anybody  else.  "  Thy  spirit,  In- 
dependence, let  me  share,"  and  I  am  not  going 
to  draw  on  other  people's  stores  in  these  lec- 
tures, for  I  quite  approve  of  the  attitude  of 
Wilamowitz,  the  foremost  Hellenist  of  the 
present  day,  who,  in  his  impatience  of  author- 
ities, has  said  substantially:  "  Egad,  while  I 
am  wasting  my  time  in  looking  up  authorities, 
I  could  excogitate  something  much  better  than 
I  could  possibly  find  elsewhere,"  And  so  I 
am  going  to  take  my  own  way  in  talking  of 
the  Greek  language.  Doubtless  there  will  be 
coincidences  with  previous  discourses  on  the 


52  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

subject.  No  lover  can  avoid  the  catalogue  of 
the  charms  of  his  mistress.  Petrarch  is  elo- 
quent in  sonnet  and  canzone  on  the  subject 
of  Laura's  eyes.  Shall  our  mistress  lack  eyes? 
Again,  your  true  lover  is  sublimely  indifferent 
to  the  fact  that  the  audience  is  utterly  unac- 
quainted with  the  object  of  his  adoration,  and 
so  even  after  many  years  of  close  communion 
with  Greek,  I  was  capable  in  1869  of  holding 
forth  ecstatically  on  its  physical  charms,  for 
I  am  enough  of  a  heathen  to  recognize  in 
physical  beauty  the  only  true  incentive  of  love. 
It  is  the  physical  beauty  of  Greek  that  consti- 
tutes its  intimate  attraction,  that  redeems,  for 
instance,  the  tedious  obviousnesses  of  the  old 
man  eloquent,  and  I  could  still  rhapsodize,  as 
I  did  forty  years  ago,  on  the  sequences  of  vow- 
els and  the  combinations  of  consonants,  the 
concert  of  mute  and  liquid,  the  clear-cut  out- 
line of  every  word  in  Greek,  clear  and  sharp 
as  the  sky-line  of  the  mountains  of  Greece,  as 
the  effigies  on  Greek  coins.  I  could  still  wax 
lyrical  about  the  paradigm  of  the  Greek 
verb.    The  Greek  verb  is,  indeed,  a  marvel. 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        53 

"  Flexible  and  exact,  simple  in  its  means, 
abundant  in  its  applications,  with  varying 
tones  for  colorless  statement,  for  eager  wish, 
for  purpose,  for  command,  now  despatching 
the  past  with  impatient  haste,  now  unrolling 
it  in  panoramic  procession,  but  bringing  forth 
its  treasure  of  vowels  and  diphthongs  to  mark 
the  striving  of  the  will,  the  thought,  the 
desire,  toward  the  future,"  and  so  on  and 
so  on.  Perhaps  discourse  like  this  might 
rouse  the  curiosity  of  the  student  and  win 
here  and  there  a  friend  for  Greek.  The 
teacher  can  never  know  whether  shall  pros- 
per either  this  or  that.  I  remember  to 
have  read  in  Gogol's  "  Dead  Souls  "  a 
eulogy  of  Russian  that  would  have  Inspired 
me,  if  I  had  been  endowed  with  ample  leisure, 
to  attempt  the  acquisition  of  that  difficult 
idiom.  But  I  am  not  quite  sure  that  this 
unverifiable  laudation  Is  the  right  way  to  lend 
vitality  to  the  study.  "  The  king's  daughter 
is  all  glorious  within."  But  he  that  Is  with- 
out remains  cold  as  a  rule.  The  love  of 
a    language    from    this    point   of    view    Is    a 


54  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

matter  of  individual  experience,  a  business  to 
be  transacted  under  four  eyes  only,  and  as 
much  of  the  physical  beauty  of  a  language 
depends  on  the  pronunciation,  it  may  be  well 
to  relegate  the  whole  thing  to  the  realm  of 
"  fancy,"  that  admirable  old  word  for  love. 
I  will,  therefore,  waive  the  whole  subject  of 
the  perfection  of  the  Greek  language,  both  in 
Its  form  and  Its  function,  the  wealth  of  its 
vocabulary,  and  the  flexibility  of  its  syntax, 
and  limit  myself  to  a  few  remarks  on  the 
relation  of  Greek  to  our  daily  life. 

That  Greek  belongs  to  the  same  family  of 
languages  as  our  native  tongue  matters  very 
little.  The  ultimate  affinity  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  for  we  cannot  keep  Latin  out  of  this 
consideration,  does  not  enter  into  our  con- 
sciousness at  all.  Any  healthy  language  appro- 
priates foreign  vocables  and  naturalizes  them, 
so  to  speak.  Etymology  is  naught.  We  do 
not  think  of  the  original  five  ingredients  of 
the  dangerous  brew  we  call  "  punch." 
"  Punch  "  may  be  a  dead  word,  but  it  Is  a 
very  live  thing,  and  stingeth  like  an  adder  or 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        55 

any  of  the  other  snakes  it  is  apt  to  generate. 
Punch,  the  brew,  isn't  two  hundred  years  old, 
and  yet  is  as  fine  an  Enghsh  word  as  the 
other  "  Punch  "  that  comes  from  the  Italian, 
and  haply  through  the  Italian  from  the 
Greek,  or  that  other  "  punch  "  that  comes 
from  the  Latin.  We  have  strings  of  mono- 
syllables that  are  made  over  into  honest 
Anglo-Saxon  words,  and  the  most  emphatic 
word  in  the  English  language — the  one  by 
which  the  English-speaking  man  is  known  the 
world  over — is  as  good  an  Anglo-Saxon  word 
as  any  that  came  riding  into  the  tight  little 
island  of  our  forefathers  with  Hengist  and 
Horsa,  and  yet  it  is  Latin.  "  Box,"  "  socks," 
*'  rocks,"  are  as  good  Anglo-Saxon  as  "  ox  " 
and  "  fox,"  and  so  we  go  on  annexing  and 
restamping  the  vocables  of  every  language 
under  the  sun.  The  word  "  punch  "  reminds 
me  that  the  great  Oxford  dictionary  is  even 
now  struggling  with  the  letter  P.  There  is 
but  a  handful  of  real  English  words  begin- 
ning with  that  letter,  and  yet  the  monosyllabic 
"  P's  "   are  all  pungently  English.     At  the 


56  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

same  time  so  subtle  a  thing  is  language  that 
a  large  proportion  of  the  P-words  show  the 
stateliness  of  their  Greco-Latin  origin,  and  in 
his  curious  analysis  of  English  style,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  emphasizes  the  fact  that  mul- 
tiplication of  P's  lends  Greco-Latin  "  pomp  " 
to  English  utterance.  Language  as  written, 
as  spoken,  is  an  art  and  not  a  science.  The 
study  of  origins,  of  etymology,  has  very  little, 
if  anything,  to  do  with  the  practice  of  speak- 
ing and  writing.  The  affinity  of  English  with 
Greek  and  Latin  is  a  matter  that  does  not  en- 
ter into  the  artistic  consciousness  of  the  masses 
that  own  the  language.  The  study  of  ety- 
mology may  help  a  scholar  here  and  there  to 
a  happier  use  of  language,  but  over-conscious- 
ness is  fatal  to  supreme  excellence  in  com- 
position, and  the  best  etymologists,  the  best 
grammarians,  are  not  the  best  stylists.  In- 
deed, among  the  worst  stylists  I  know  are  men 
learned  in  all  the  mysteries  of  the  origin  of 
English.  Cobbett's  indictment  of  the  fruits 
of  classical  scholarship  is  itself  an  English 
classic.     One  goes  to  the  tinker,  John  Bun- 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        57 

yan,  and  to  the  cotton-spinner,  John  Bright, 
who  knew  no  Latin  or  Greek,  for  specimens 
of  EngHsh  at  its  best,  and  not  to  HaUiwell- 
Phillipps  or  to  our  late  atrabilarious  country- 
man Fitzedward  Hall,  Bright,  it  is  true, 
was  nurtured  by  the  study  of  those  who  had 
fed  on  the  honeydew  of  the  classics,  but 
Bunyan — that  is  a  serious  problem  for  the 
student  of  English  style.  I  am  not  casting 
any  aspersion  on  the  character  of  that  rather 
uncertain  maid  Etymology,  but  our  present 
meditation  does  not  deal  with  Etymology;  we 
have  to  deal  not  with  the  roots  but  with  the 
foliage  of  language,  and  that  foliage,  that 
vocabulary,  is  largely  made  up  of  Greek  and 
Latin  words.  When  we  learn  Greek  and 
Latin,  we  meet  with  hosts  of  old  familiars, 
so  that  it  has  actually  been  proposed  to  learn 
Latin  and  Greek  by  supplementing  the  Eng- 
lish vocabulary,  and  Professor  Goodell,  of 
Yale,  prepared  in  his  hopeful  days  a  little 
volume  called  The  Greek  in  English,  with  a 
view  to  facilitating  the  acquisition  of  Greek. 
Similar    experiments    have    been    made    with 

5 


58  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

Other  languages.  I  recall  a  textbook  which 
undertook  to  teach  German  by  gathering  up 
first  all  the  words  that  were  common  to  Ger- 
man and  English,  and  then  proceeding  to 
those  that  had  a  clear  etymological  connection, 
and  so  on  to  the  more  remote  congeners.  Six 
weeks  in  a  German  family,  in  German  sur- 
roundings, would  have  been  worth  all  that 
parade  of  etymology,  and  after  all  someone 
has  been  bold  enough  to  say  that  the  struc- 
ture of  the  sentence  in  modern  English  takes 
it  out  of  the  Teutonic  group.  In  this  respect 
we  are  nearer  French  than  we  are  to  German, 
and  you  remember  Matthew  Arnold's  famous 
essay  in  which  he  congratulated  the  English- 
speaking  world  that  they  are  not  bound  by 
the  Germanic  rules,  of  which  Mark  Twain 
has  made  immortal  fun.  But  infinite  as  our 
obligations  are  to  French,  obligations  set  forth 
with  staggering  volubility  by  Churton  Collins 
just  before  his  death,  the  heart  of  our  lan- 
guage is  Anglo-Saxon,  that  is,  Germanic,  and 
the  contrast  between  the  sphere  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  the  sphere  of  the  French  element 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        59 

is  a  familiar  story.  But  the  kinship  of  Eng- 
Hsh  and  German  shows  itself  in  an  artistic 
way,  and  that  is  in  the  instinctive  repugnance 
we  feel  against  the  incorporation  of  German 
words  into  our  language.  Scholars  are  prone 
to  import  the  German  technical  terms  of  lin- 
guistic science  into  English,  but  they  are  all 
repellent;  the  very  kinship  makes  them  dis- 
agreeable. They  are  so  much  like  English 
that  they  ought  to  be  Anglicized,  and  submit 
to  the  assimilative  processes  through  which 
the  Latin  and  Greek  elements  of  our  language 
have  passed,  to  the  strangle  of  the  mailed  fist 
with  which  we  have  seized  the  wealth  of  other 
idioms  and  compressed  the  leaf  into  the  lump, 
the  polysyllable  into  the  monosyllable.  To 
this  monosyllabic  character  foreigners  object. 
True,  they  admire  this  pemmican  of  language, 
as  English  has  been  called,  but  the  German 
poet  Platen  reproaches  us  with  the  inharmo- 
niousness  of  our  monosyllabic  speech.  Let 
Tennyson  make  answer  in  his  In  Memoriam 
from  the  artistic  point  of  view,  and  Sweet 
from  the  scientific  point  of  view.     The  verte- 


6o  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

brse  play  Into  each  other  with  all  the  perfec- 
tion of  a  continuous  surface,  so  that  the  music 
resides  in  the  sentence,  not  in  the  words.  Now 
I  have  claimed  all  monosyllables  with  Anglo- 
Saxon  coloring  as  our  own,  and  so  we  have 
to  look  to  the  polysyllabic  constituents  of  our 
speech  for  the  Latin  and  Greek  contributions 
to  our  thesaurus,  and  as  the  language  does  not 
belong  to  the  scholar,  but  to  the  people,  it 
would  be  a  curious  question  how  far  the  peo- 
ple feel  these  foreign  elements  of  our  com- 
posite speech.  The  man,  for  instance,  who 
knows  no  Latin  falls  instinctively  into  the 
Latin  strain  of  English  when  he  essays  the 
grand  style.  Johnsonese,  as  it  is  called,  is  by 
no  means  an  extinct  lingo,  and  the  example  of 
one  of  the  most  robust  statesmen  our  times 
have  known  has  left  on  record  astounding 
proof  of  the  fact  that  the  pomp  of  our  Eng- 
lish Latin  is  not  inconsistent  with  vigor.  We 
choose  the  tallest  man  for  a  drum  major,  and 
the  strongest  man  is  chosen  to  flaunt  the  ban- 
ner in  the  procession.  From  one  of  Mr. 
Cleveland's  latest  compositions  I  cull  the  fol- 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        6i 

lowing  delightful  phrases — actuarial  mystery, 
managerial  calculation,  senseless  resentment, 
predatory  acquisitiveness,  demagogic  appeal. 
We  may  smile,  but  there  is  a  man  behind  these 
words,  and  those  who  want  honest  Anglo- 
Saxon  would  be  puzzled  to  find  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  substitute  for  "  innocuous  desuetude." 
I  am  deviating  into  Latin,  it  is  true,  but 
the  Greek  words  that  are  imbedded  in  our 
language  come  largely  through  the  Latin, 
and  in  technical  language,  in  which  Greek 
makes  itself  chiefly  felt,  Latin  and  Greek  have 
a  common  cause,  and  alike  roused  rebellion 
on  the  part  of  Anglo-Saxon  purists,  who  some 
decennia  ago  talked  of  the  "  unthoroughfare- 
someness  of  stuff,"  instead  of  "  impermeabil- 
ity of  matter,"  and  when  "  stuff  "  turned  out 
to  be  French,  substituted  for  stuff  "  anwork," 
or  "  antimber."  These  are  they  who  would 
revive  "  Againbite  of  Inwit  "  for  *'  remorse 
of  conscience."  In  a  book  published  thirty 
years  ago.  The  Past,  Present  and  Future  of 
England's  Language,  Mr.  William  Marshall 
proposed  "  farwrit  "   for  "  telegram,"   "  lig- 


63  HELLAS   AND    HESPERL4 

writ  "  for  "  photograph,"  "outstandingness  " 
for  "  person,"  and  a  lot  of  "  wan's  "  besides 
the  obsolete  "  wanhope,"  which  is  pretty 
enough.  In  Germany  the  rebellion  against 
Greek  and  Latin  and  other  foreign  vocables 
has  led  to  some  absurd  results.  The  German 
purists  of  my  boyhood  were  often  forced  to 
write  the  "  foreign  "  word  in  brackets  after 
the  "  native  "  word  to  explain  what  the  native 
word  meant;  and  the  war  against  French 
has  been  renewed  of  late  years  to  the  con- 
fusion of  those  who  learned  German  half  a 
century  ago.  The  technical  Greek  terms 
that  have  been  incorporated  into  German 
have  to  be  used  in  order  to  explain  the  new- 
fangled German  terms,  and  though  in  modern 
English  the  linguistic  conscience  is  often  of- 
fended by  the  dreadful  compounds  that  are 
manufactured  after  German  patterns,  when  it 
comes  to  technical  terms,  we  surrender  to  the 
Greek,  and  one  of  the  side-functions  of  the 
Greek  professor  is  to  lick  into  shape  the  cubs 
of  scientific  vocabulary.  The  old  cockney  joke 
of  the  manufacturer  of  blacking,  "  We  keeps 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        63 

a  poet,"  has  its  modern  parallel  in  "  We  keeps 
a  Grecian." 

So  long  then  as  our  divine  English  must 
summon  Greek  as  the  scientific  Adam  to 
name  all  the  new  creations  of  our  mechan- 
ical genius,  there  is  no  danger  that  Greek  will 
be  utterly  forgotten.  "  Windjammer  "  is  a 
fine  word,  I  grant,  and  so  is  every  Anglo- 
Saxon  compound  that  grows  and  is  not  made, 
but  these  are  very  few.  Indeed  it  is  said  that 
the  only  good  compound  evolved  during  the 
Civil  War  is  "  gripsack."  The  period  of  such 
spontaneous  growths  seems  to  have  passed 
with  the  Shakespearean  times.  Beddoes,  un- 
der German  influences,  tried  to  bring  back 
the  day  of  Anglo-Saxon  "  kennings,"  but  we 
shall  always  say  "  telephone "  and  "  tele- 
graph "  instead  of  "  far-speaker  "  and  "  far- 
writer  "  with  "  phone  "  and  "  wire  "  in  time 
of  need.  I  am  personally  responsible  for 
"  bolometer,"  which  I  created  at  the  request 
of  the  late  Professor  Langley.  "  Aerodrome  " 
comes  straight  from  Lucian,  and  it  was  at  my 
earnest  request  that  Professor  Langley  for- 


64  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

bore  to  prefix  "  tachy  "  In  order  to  indicate 
its  speed.  V/hy  multiply  syllables?  I  said.  Ten 
years  hence  it  will  be  "  drome."  In  less  than 
ten  years  we  have  "  aeroplane,"  "  the  wan- 
derer through  the  air,"  which  is  doubtless 
destined  to  become  plain  "  plane."  It  is  impos- 
sible to  get  rid  of  Greek.  With  all  this  wealth 
of  Greek  technical  terms,  there  is  no  possi- 
bility of  the  bodily  passing  of  Greek.  It  is 
an  integral  part  of  our  daily  linguistic  life, 
and  the  subconsciousness  of  it  is  always  some- 
thing to  be  counted  with. 

About  the  persistence  of  Greek  literature 
and  Greek  literary  tradition  in  our  literature, 
there  can  be  no  question,  unless  we  make  an 
unparalleled  break  with  our  past,  unless  we 
do  in  literature  and  art  what  some  are  aiming 
to  do  in  politics.  For  English  literature  one 
needs  a  classical  dictionary  from  our  morning- 
star  Chaucer  down  to  the  smelly  kerosene 
lamp  of  the  magazine  writer. 

Whatever  our  degree  of  kinship  to  the 
early  representatives  of  the  Aryan  race,  they 
are    naught    to    us    in    comparison    with    the 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        65 

Greeks,  whether  native  Greeks  or  Romanized 
Greeks.  Comparative  grammar  has  done  its 
best  to  bring  us  into  conscious  connection  with 
our  Aryan  past;  I  need  only  refer  to  Max 
Miiller's  popular  essays,  and  for  more  recent 
times  to  Professor  Bloomfield's  brilliant  lec- 
tures on  the  Religion  of  the  Veda.  We  do 
not  worship  Dyauspitar  as  we  worship  Jupiter 
and  Zeus.  Dyauspitar  will  not  fit  into  Pope's 
"  Jehovah,  Jove  or  Lord  ";  Varuna  does  not 
speak  to  us  as  does  Uranus,  far  off  as  Uranus 
is,  nor  Sarameyas  as  Hermes,  nor  do  the  Har- 
itas,  horses  of  the  sun,  appeal  to  us  as  do  the 
Charites,  the  Gratiae  decentes  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  All  modern  European  literature  is 
alive  to  us  by  reason  of  this  community;  all 
else  is  a  mere  curiosity;  at  most,  a  bit  of  an- 
thropology. Some  time  ago  a  volume  of 
translations  from  the  Tamil  fell  into  my 
hands.  Tamil  literature,  it  seems,  is  impreg- 
nated with  Sanskrit  literature,  and  I  make  no 
doubt  that  the  Sanskrit  scholar  would  feel 
many  a  kindred  touch  in  these  Tamil  quat- 
rains, but  somehow  they  do  not  appeal  to  me, 


66  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 


and  I  tried  in  vain  to  do  for  them  in  my 
measure  what  Fitzgerald  did  for  Omar  Khay- 
yam in  his.     Here  is  one : 

Lord  of  the  hilly  land  where  the  immature  little  monkey, 
with  its  finger  like  a  bean-pod,  will  flip  its  father  when  it 
meets  him,  and  poke  him  and  snatch  fruit  from  him.  Af- 
flictive indeed  is  friendship  with  the  uncongenial. 

The  immature  little  monkey  with  its  fin- 
ger like  a  bean-pod  is  good,  but  you  can't 
get  the  figures  of  the  sons  of  Eli,  of  the 
sons  of  CEdipus,  out  of  the  immature  little 
monkey  with  its  finger  like  a  bean-pod.  He 
is  an  exotic;  he  belongs  to  the  zoological  gar- 
den, where  he  is  caged,  to  the  top  of  a  hand- 
organ,  where  he  is  tethered. 

It  is,  I  repeat,  a  matter  of  tradition  and  not 
of  blood;  bone  of  our  bone  and  flesh  of  our 
flesh  as  much  as  you  please.  True,  Odin  and 
Thor  and  Freya  plant  themselves  square  on 
our  Christian  week.  A  Northern  goddess 
gives  her  name  to  a  Christian  festival.  But 
Balder  is  dead  and  Apollo  lives,  and  if  a  man 
like  Sophus  Bugge  arises  and  propounds  the 
false  doctrine,  heresy  and  schism  that  all  the 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        67 


figures  of  Norse  mythology  are  mere  transfers 
from  the  classics,  we  have  no  sense  of  blas- 
phemy. "  And  they  called  Barnabas  Jupiter, 
and  Paul  Mercurius,"  and  all  our  deities  bear 
pagan,  bear  classic  names.  One  is  sick  of  the 
old  quotation  often  misquoted,  old  as  it  is, 
about  Shakespeare's  small  Latin  and  less 
Greek.  Read  Stapfer's  book  on  Shakespeare 
and  Antiquity,  read  Shakespeare  himself,  not 
his  dramas  taken  from  Plutarch,  but  his  other 
plays,  and  see  what  a  stock  of  classical  allu- 
sions he  has.  Ben  Jonson  is  full  of  classic 
reminiscences;  his  learned  sock  is  full  of  the 
dust  of  the  Appian  Way.  Read  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  Defence  of  Poesie.  It  is  a  little  thing 
but  scholars  have  not  yet  answered  all  the 
questions  that  it  suggests.  It  is  a  most  im- 
portant monument  of  English  prose,  and  Eng- 
lish prose  that  comes  straight  from  the  close 
embrace  of  the  classics.  Milton's  text  has 
not  yet  been  exhausted  by  the  student  of  antiq- 
uity. I  do  not  think  that  I  should  care  to  give 
my  days  and  nights  to  Lycophron  in  order  to 
understand  Milton  better,  but  think  of  the 


68  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

enormous  influence  Milton  has  exerted.  The 
classicism  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  not 
what  we  should  call  a  vital  classicism.  Chap- 
man's Homer  has  more  real  life  than  Pope's 
Homer.  Few  are  the  authors  of  the  period 
on  whom  Greek  had  a  true  hold,  but  Virgil's 
magic  wand  still  ruled  the  century,  and  to 
know  Greek  is  the  price  of  knowing  Virgil. 
Out  of  the  Georgics,  the  masterpiece  of  the 
great  Mantuan,  out  of  the  elegiac  poets  of 
Roman  antiquity,  true  poetry  has  been  born 
again.  All  European  science  was  kindled 
from  the  spark  kept  alive  in  astrology;  all 
the  new  growth  of  the  poetry  of  nature  may 
be  traced  to  the  phosphate  of  didactic  poetry. 
Gray,  I  need  not  say,  was  a  classicist  in  every 
fibre,  and  in  the  closer  study  of  style,  in  the 
study  of  phonetic  effects,  he  has  few  rivals. 
His  work  is  imperishable,  but  who  would  sus- 
pect in  the  author  of  the  Elegy  the  patient 
annotator  of  Strabo?  Cowper,  in  whom  we 
see  the  dawn  of  a  new  day,  owes  much  to  the 
antique.  The  upheaval  of  the  French  revo- 
lution was  a  return  to  the  republican  life  of 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        69 

the  classic  world.  Byron,  rhetorician  though 
he  is,  and  far  more  Roman  than  Greek,  died 
for  Greece.  Shelley  is  an  exhalation  from  a 
Greek  censer,  and  Keats'  sensitive  harp  vi- 
brated to  the  divine  air  that  blew  through 
the  hedge  of  translation.  The  great  Victo- 
rian poets  are  steeped  in  Greek  study.  Never 
was  Greek  nearer  to  us  than  it  is  now.  Ten- 
nyson, Browning,  Swinburne,  Morris,  sug- 
gest classic  themes.  One  of  my  former  pu- 
pils, Professor  Mustard,  has  written  a  whole 
volume  on  classical  echoes  in  Tennyson,  and 
classic  themes  are  nearer  to  us,  more  real  to 
us — not  to  me,  but  to  you — than  Knights  of 
the  Round  Table  and  the  parties  to  an  Italian 
lawsuit. 

Another  point  on  which  it  might  be  profit- 
able to  dwell,  especially  as  it  is  less  worn 
than  the  one  on  which  I  have  been  pirouet- 
ting, is  the  persistence  of  classic  culture  in 
authors  that  have  had  no  classical  training, 
no  classical  drill.  Take  Bunyan  for  the  old 
time;  take  Kipling  for  the  time  that  now 
is.     At  least  I  did  take  Kipling  for  the  time 


70  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

that  now  Is,  but  in  order  to  make  sure,  I 
requested  a  friend  of  mine,  who  knew  him 
personally,  to  ask  Kipling  whether  he  had 
ever  studied  the  ancient  classics.  His  answer 
was:  I  know  only  the  dry  bones  (Bohns)  of 
classical  literature.  They  are,  as  some  of 
those  who  are  present  know,  the  dry  bones 
of  a  well-known  species  of  pony.  Since  then 
I  have  had  reason  to  doubt  the  truth  of  the 
statement,  but  why  surrender  an  illustration 
at  the  bidding  of  fact?  And  some  of  you  may 
remember  the  Horatian  passage  in  the  Native- 
born,  one  of  the  Songs  of  the  Seven  Seas: 

They  change  their  skies  above  them 

But  not  their  hearts  that  roam ; 
We  learned  from  our  wistful  mothers 

To  call  Old  England  "  home." 

The  thranite  and  the  thalamite  of  the  verses 
quoted  in  my  first  lecture  require  a  Greek 
lexicon,  if  they  are  not  to  be  as  meaningless 
to  the  average  reader  as  Hivite  and  Periz- 
zite,  and  the  "  god  that  hailed  "  is  the  classic 
form  of  the  Prince  of  the  Power  of  the  Air. 
I  too  would  plead   for  an  honest  American 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       71 

literature,  a  literature  of  the  soil,  but  the 
classics  are  in  a  measure  our  home,  and  Kip- 
ling quotes  Horace  as  the  burial  service  quotes 
a  verse  from  a  Greek  comic  poet.  It  is  not 
a  matter  of  blood,  it  is  a  matter  of  tradition. 
I  have  had  something  to  say,  one  can  say 
little  in  view  of  the  wealth  of  material,  about 
Greek  as  a  tradition,  as  an  incorporation.  I 
might  say  as  much,  if  not  more,  about  Greek 
as  a  standard,  as  something  to  which  we  are 
bound  to  recur,  and  which  we  must  try  to  un- 
derstand. This  insistence  on  the  standard  is 
very  Greek.  The  Greeks  themselves  were 
very  much  given  to  canons,  which  they  incor- 
porated in  works  of  art.  The  matter  is  noto- 
rious in  architecture,  in  sculpture.  Oddly 
enough  in  the  art  of  speech,  in  rhetoric,  the 
Greek  standards  have  been  more  and  more 
neglected.  Even  the  French  who  have  owed 
so  much  to  formal  rhetoric  have  begun  to 
break  away  from  the  tradition,  and  as  for  the 
English,  what  else  is  to  be  expected?  The 
foremost  English  editor  of  Aristotle's  Rhet- 
oric sneers  at  the  later  Greek  rhetoricians,  as 


72  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

if  the  later  Greek  rhetoricians  had  not  kept 
alive  the  traditions  of  a  better  time,  and  for 
lack  of  rhetorical  training  some  of  our  lead- 
ing literary  men  have  been  left  to  rediscover 
in  their  practice  the  elementary  law  of  the  sen- 
tence, to  wit,  that  the  sentence  is  to  be  meas- 
ured by  the  breath  of  the  utterance,  that  it 
has  a  pneumonic  gauge.     The  carpenter  who 
tests  the  squareness  of  his  joints  by  8,  6  and 
lo  is  doing  a  bit  of  Greek  mathematics,  and 
follows  an  exact  method  which  is  far  better 
than  the  rule  of  thumb  by  which  nearly  every- 
body   writes.      And    those    Greek    rules    are 
things  of  life,  of  poetry.     The  period  must 
not  exceed  what  can  be  carried  on  one  breath; 
must   not    exceed    four    trimeters,    four   hex- 
ameters.    The    measure    of    the    sentence    is 
the  breath.     That  is  life.     The  measure  of 
the  breath  is  the  verse.     That  is  poetry.    And 
it  is  not  uninteresting  to  note  that  as  poetry 
regulated  prose  speech,  so  the  soaring  verse 
of  Homer  furnished  the  measure  of  the  scriv- 
ener's task,  and  the  scribe  was  practically  paid 
by  the  hexametrical  line. 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       73 

But  it  is  more  in  consonance  with  the  object 
of  these  lectures  to  give  prominence  to  Greek 
for  its  suggestiveness  rather  than  for  its  nor- 
mality, which  so  many  people  consider  as  sup- 
pressive of  life,  whereas  true  life,  like  true  lib- 
erty, demands  nothing  more  imperatively  than 
bounds.  And  the  reference  I  have  made  to  the 
canons  of  Greek  sculpture  reminds  me  of  the 
charge  of  coldness  and  statuesqueness  which 
perfervid  Romanticists  used  to  bring  against 
classical  literature,  classical  literature  which 
really  palpitates  with  life.  How  readily  mod- 
ern thought  finds  its  embodiment  in  the  plastic 
forms  of  Greek  mythology,  I  need  not  tell 
you  who  are  familiar  with  the  poetry  of  our 
own  age,  and  those  cold,  statuesque  forms 
are  ready  to  spring  into  life  again,  perhaps 
a  higher  life,  if  touched  by  genius.  Form  is 
antique,  they  say,  but  color  is  modern.  How 
antiquity  has  been  misjudged,  and  misjudged 
for  centuries,  is  patent  enough  now.  I  am  old 
enough  to  remember  the  hot  controversy 
about  the  use  of  color  in  Greek  architecture 
and  Greek  sculpture.  There  is  no  such  quar- 
6 


74  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

rel  now,  and  as  I  have  always  worked  on  the 
abandoned  formula  of  a  great  central  pur- 
pose in  history,  as  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me,  to  use  the  figure  of  Jean  Paul,  that  the 
same  sun  that  regulates  the  movement  of  the 
planets,  regulates  the  unfolding  of  the  flower- 
clock  of  art  and  literature,  so  I  have  often 
thought  that  the  perfect  revelation  of  the  past 
is  reserved  for  those  who  have  been  trained  to 
appreciate  the  fulness  of  the  times,  and  that 
the  microscopic  studies  of  our  own  day  are 
to  be  made  subservient  to  a  truer  appreciation 
of  the  beautiful  in  antique  art,  literary  as  well 
as  plastic.  At  least  such  has  been  the  aim  of 
my  own  life,  and  my  chief  hope  that  I  have 
not  lived  in  vain. 

On  the  one  hand,  then,  we  of  this  day 
are  really  better  able  to  appreciate  the  life 
of  antiquity  by  our  systematic  studies  than 
those  who  have  gone  before  us,  and  this 
shows  that  these  studies  are  vital,  or  they 
would  not  grow;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
new  material  has  been  furnished  to  round  our 
conception  of  the  oneness  of  the  old  life  with 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       75 

the  new.  Of  this  new  material  I  shall  have  a 
word  or  two  to  say,  but  I  must  now  turn  to 
the  great  stock  of  Greek  literature  before  the 
recent  additions  which  Egypt  has  yielded  to 
the  stores  of  the  eager  scholar.  There  is  no 
lack  of  palpitating  life  in  Greek  literature,  no 
lack  of  freshness  and  dewiness  in  the  field  of 
the  Charites,  no  lack  of  real  flowers,  no  lack 
of  swaying,  wooing  blossoms.  Flowers,  oh 
yes!  there  are  flowers  in  Greek  literature. 
Have  we  not  the  Anthology,  hasn't  Mr.  Mac- 
kail's  translation  with  his  delightful  introduc- 
tion reached  a  second  edition?  But  there  are 
flowers  and  flowers,  flowers  of  rhetoric  and 
flowers  of  sulphur,  and  I  venture  to  say  that 
the  Greek  Anthology  is  full  of  subtle  prob- 
lems of  taste,  I  had  almost  said  smell,  for  the 
Greeks  valued  flowers,  grew  flowers  largely 
for  their  smell,  just  as  in  English  the  native 
word  is  "  nosegay,"  not  "  bouquet,"  and  the 
sense  of  smell,  one  of  the  lowest  senses  as  it 
is  called,  is  one  of  the  most  subtle,  more  subtle 
than  the  most  searching  chemical  analysis. 
And  this  intimate  perfume  is  to  be  sought  and 


76  HELLAS   AND    HESPERL4 

found  in  the  least  trodden  recesses  of  Greek 
literature,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  joy  to  me  that 
the  study  of  Greek  lyric,  so  long  neglected, 
has  been  brought  to  the  front.  He  who  knows 
the  real  Anacreon  will  not  be  imposed  by  the 
sham  Anacreon,  and  will  learn  to  distinguish 
between  tonqua  bean  and  vanilla.  In  the 
intimate  appreciation  of  such  things  there  has 
been  an  immeasurable  advance  in  our  time. 
Think  of  what  Sappho  was  to  Namby  Pamby 
Phillips,  what  she  is  to  Swinburne,  in  whose 
Anactoria  she  lives  again  and  burns  again. 
It  is  almost  incredible  that  the  original  of 
Catullus'  Ille  mi  par  esse  deo  videtur  should 
appear  in  a  history  of  Greek  literature  in 
Phillips's  rendering,  when  so  many  better, 
though  still  inadequate,  versions  are  to 
be  found  in  Mr.  Wharton's  Sappho.  And 
then  this  deeper  study,  this  truer  appreciation, 
has  had  its  reward  in  these  latter  days — let 
us  hope — will  continue  to  have  its  reward,  and 
the  old-fashioned  Providence  to  which  I  did 
homage  a  few  minutes  ago  has  held  back  some 
of  the  most  coveted  treasures  of  antiquity,  un- 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       77 

til  we  were  ready  for  them,  just  as  some  of 
the  greatest  achievements  of  the  plastic  art 
of  antiquity  have  come  forth  from  their 
hiding  places  to  rejoice  the  eyes  of  the 
men  of  our  day.  To  one  who  takes  large 
views  of  history  there  is  a  certain  conso- 
lation in  the  loss  of  so  much  of  antique  lit- 
erature. Whole  departments  of  literature 
have  been  swept  away,  and  we  sigh  for  this 
author  and  that  author  in  the  ranges  that  are 
left.  But,  as  I  have  maintained,  the  most 
characteristic  monuments  have  survived,  those 
which  no  conceivable  combination  could  ever 
reproduce,  and  now  when  the  love  of  the 
antique  is  waxing  cold,  our  curiosity  is  quick- 
ened by  the  discovery  not  only  of  works  that 
were  supposed  to  be  lost  forever,  but  works 
that  reveal  kinship  where  kinship  was  not 
suspected.  Greek  is  an  almost  inevitable  ac- 
complishment, if  one  would  keep  up  with  the 
times.  Aristotle's  Constitution  of  Athens 
roused  more  excitement  than  the  newest  novel. 
It  was  the  book  of  the  month ;  it  was  as  if  the 
other  side  of  the  moon  had  been  turned  round 


78  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

to  our  vision,  and  a  catalogue  of  all  the  re- 
sults of  Egyptian  exploration,  not  to  say  a 
characteristic  of  them,  would  fill  a  long  course 
of  lectures.  Not  only  have  we  complemented 
our  knowledge  of  the  great  poets  that  we 
have,  but  we  have  learned  important  lessons 
in  the  book  of  humanity,  we  have  been  brought 
into  touch  with  a  life  that  is  our  own.  Even 
our  frailties  which  we  nursed  as  pet  ailments 
of  our  intellectual  and  moral  structure  have 
been  identified.  The  vulgarity  of  Herodas 
is  ours,  the  fantastic  turbulence  of  Timotheus 
is  ours,  the  so-called  Erotic  Fragment  of  Gren- 
fell  quivers  with  a  passion  that  some  of  the 
unmentionable  novels  of  our  day  simulate,  and 
the  charm  of  Menander  for  antiquity  turns 
out  to  be  a  certain  modern  sentimentality,  as 
where  a  husband  who  has  tried  to  indemnify 
himself  for  the  supposed  infidelity  of  his  wife, 
reflects  on  the  moral  superiority  of  the  party 
of  the  other  part. 

With  the  advance  of  Greek  studies  has 
gone  hand  in  hand  an  advance  in  the  art  of 
translation — the   advance   of   Greek   studies, 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       79 

for,  as  I  put  it  some  time  ago,  the  cubic  con- 
tents of  Greek,  are  greater  than  ever;  and  I 
have  no  sympathy  with  the  pedantry  that  bars 
out  translation  and  insists  on  the  original. 
Many  friends  have  been  lost  to  classical  study 
by  the  ban  that  pedants  have  issued  against 
renderings  first  into  Latin,  then  into  m^odern 
languages.  The  French  fashion  of  issuing 
classic  texts,  faced  with  a  translation  into 
French,  is  coming  up,  and  in  England  Greek 
scholars  of  the  highest  rank,  such  as  Jebb, 
have  won  renown  not  only  by  their  commen- 
taries, but  by  renderings  that  answer  as  com- 
mentaries at  many  subtle  points.  But  trans- 
lation and  methods  of  translation  furnish  a 
theme  on  which  an  old  teacher  might  hold 
forth  forever,  and  after  all  there  abides  in 
the  original  an  incommunicable  charm.  Jules 
Janin,  the  frivolous,  tells  a  story  of  two 
French  Hellenists  who  went  into  rhapsodies 
over  Pindar,  and  chanted  long  passages  of  the 
original  to  one  another.  But  when  the  wife 
of  President  Morisset  insisted  on  a  transla- 
tion, and  her  husband  yielded  to  her  request, 


go  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

she  protested  against  the  gallimaufry  he  was 
trying  to  palm  off  on  her,  and  declared  that 
it  would  have  been  much  better  if  these  schol- 
ars had  confessed  that  they  were  revelling  in 
indecencies  unfit  for  the  ear  of  a  self-respect- 
ing woman.  There  is  a  familiar  illustration 
of  the  inadequacy  of  the  best  rendering  pos- 
sible in  Lewes'  Life  of  Goethe,  where  he 
translates  a  verse  of  Mickell's  famous  ballad 
into  another  English : 

The  dews  of  summer  night  did  fall, 

The  moon,  sweet  regent  of  the  sky, 
Shone  on  the  walls  of  Cumnor  Hall 

And  many  an  oak  that  grew  thereby. 

The  nightly  dews  commenced  to  fall. 

The  moon,  whose  empire  is  the  sky. 
Shone  on  the  sides  of  Cumnor  Hall 

And  all  the  oaks  that  stood  thereby. 

Sweetly  did  fall  the  dews  of  night. 

The  moon  of  heaven,  the  lovely  queen, 

On  Cumnor  Hall  shone  silver  bright 

And  glanced  the  oaks'  broad  boughs  between. 

Now  I  venture  to  say  with  Lewes  that  no  ren- 
dering into  a  foreign  tongue  is  likely  to  ap- 
proximate the  fidelity  of  these  sacrilegious 
performances,  and  what  shall  be  said  of  a 
newspaper    retranslation    into   English    of    a 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        8i 

French   version   of    such    a    master-poem   as 
Poe's  Raven? 

I  pushed  the  shutter.  A  superb  raven  darted  into  my 
chamber,  gracefully  fluttering  his  wings.  He  did  not 
make  me  any  reverence.  He  came  in  as  if  he  felt  per- 
fectly at  home,  and  perched,  full  of  majesty,  with  the 
grand  airs  of  a  lord  or  a  lady,  on  a  bust  of  Pallas  above 
my  door. 

I  could  not  refrain  from  smiling  before  the  grave  coun- 
tenance of  this  bird  of  ebony.  Tell  me,  I  said  aloud,  what 
is  your  lordly  name  on  this  Plutonian  shore  of  the  night? 
He  responded.  Never  again. 

This  response  did  not  seem  to  have  much  sense.  Did  it 
ever  happen  to  anybody  to  find  at  midnight  over  his  door 
on  a  bust  of  Pallas  a  bird  calling  itself  "Never  again"? 

A  gross  caricature,  you  may  say,  and  un- 
worthy of  this  audience.  Let  me  exemplify 
the  importance  of  minute  change  In  diction 
and  rhythm  by  a  rendering  of  a  verse  of  Ten- 
nyson, that  keeps  much  closer  to  the  language 
than  Lewes'  translations  of  MIckell : 

The  rain  had  fallen,  the  poet  arose. 

He  passed  by  the  town  and  out  of  the  street. 
A  light  wind  blew  from  the  gates  of  the  sun 

And  waves  of  shadow  went  over  the  wheat. 
And  he  sate  him  down  in  a  lonely  place 

And  chanted  a  melody  loud  and  sweet 
That  made  the  wild  swan  pause  in  her  cloud 

And  the  lark  drop  down  at  his  feet. 


83  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

The  rain  had  ceased,  the  poet  rose, 

He  passed  through  town,  passed  out  of  street. 
A  light  wind  from  the  sun's  gates  blew. 

And  waves  of  shade  went  o'er  the  wheat. 
Down  sate  he  in  a  lonely  place 

And  sang  a  song  both  loud  and  sweet. 
The  wild  swan  paused  within  her  cloud, 

The  lark  from  heaven  dropped  at  his  feet. 

Byron  Is  not  the  most  musical  of  poets,  and 
Swinburne  declares  that  he  gains  by  a  trans- 
lation into  French  prose,  but  I  have  recently 
met  with  a  translation  of  one  familiar  line 
into  French  prose,  and  I  am  sure  that  "  Fare 
thee  well !  and  if  forever,  still  forever  fare 
thee  well,"  does  not  gain  In  Bourget's  ren- 
dering. Adieu,  et  si  c'est  pour  toujoiirs,  he 
bien,  adieu,  pour  tou jours  adieu.  Larmes, 
vaines  larmes,  was  Brunetiere's  obvious  trans- 
lation of  "  Tears,  Idle  tears,"  and  there  are 
"  tears  "  in  larmes,  but  not  our  tears.  One 
reason  of  the  Inadequacy  of  translation  Is 
the  hopeless  difference  of  the  phonetic  affin- 
ities of  the  various  mechanical  equivalents. 
Translate  "  nightingale  "  by  rossignol.  If  you 
choose,  but  the  associations  of  rossignol  are 
as    Ignoble    as   those    of    "  nightingale  "    are 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        83 

lofty,  and  everybody  knows  how  the  French 
Melpomene  balked  at  the  translation  of 
Othello  because  of  "  handkerchief."  Mou- 
choir,  with  all  its  vile  associations,  was  not 
meant  for  a  tragic  crisis.  What  is  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  matter?  Must  every- 
body learn  Greek?  Such  a  conclusion  would 
savor  too  much  of  that  plea  for  Greek  which 
I  declined  to  make  at  the  outset  of  these  talks. 
And  yet  I  should  like  to  say  a  word  in  closing 
by  way  of  reply  to  those  who  sneer  at  a  smat- 
tering of  this  language  and  that.  It  is  aston- 
ishing, I  have  said  elsewhere,  how  much  en- 
joyment one  can  get  from  a  language  one  un- 
derstands imperfectly;  and  Prince  Kropotkin, 
a  linguist  as  all  Russians  are,  asks,  "  Is  there 
a  higher  esthetic  delight  than  to  read  poetry 
in  a  language  which  one  does  not  yet  quite 
thoroughly  understand?"  It  is  astonishing 
what  a  moral  effect  the  sentences  of  a  foreign 
tongue  can  exercise.  It  is  astonishing  what  a 
feeling  of  fellowship  is  engendered  by  a  stock 
quotation  from  Latin  and  Greek.  Whether 
it  is  worth  while  to  spend  so  much  time  on 


84  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

Latin  and  Greek  in  order  to  recall  a  musical 
line  from  Homer  or  Virgil,  to  say  from  the 
heart  some  of  the  untranslatables,  such  as 
Sunt  lacrima  rerum,  such  as  7?ieta  kai  tode 
toisi  genestho,  to  put  one's  self  into  sym- 
pathetic relation  with  the  scholarly  past,  it 
is  not  for  me  to  say,  as  my  testimony  may 
be  suspect,  and  might  reveal  more  of  my 
life  than  would  be  fitting.  All  that  the  best 
of  us  reach  in  any  range  of  study  is  a  smat- 
tering, and  I  am  only  thankful  for  my  own 
smatterings.  In  crises  of  life  the  words  that 
come  up  to  one  are  not  always  the  words  of 
the  mother  tongue,  but  those  that  had  been 
acquired  at  school,  the  words  of  comfort  and 
counsel  that  saved  the  lesson  from  being  an 
unmitigated  bore.  Those  nails  fastened  by 
the  masters  of  assemblies  are  golden  nails. 
We  say  of  a  supreme  resolve :  iacta  alea  esto. 
It  means  more  than  "  The  die  is  cast,"  for  it 
means  "  Let  the  die  be  cast  and  stay  cast." 
But  when  Ceesar  crossed  the  Rubicon  he  used 
Greek  and  not  Latin.  Anerrhiphtho  kyhos 
is  recorded  among  the  fragments  of  his  favor- 


GREEK  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        85 

ite  Menander.  A  queer  French  writer  en- 
graved on  his  seal  the  English  words  "  Too 
late!  " — the  summary  of  a  life  that  was  on 
the  whole  a  failure.  It  does  not  mean  more 
to  us  than  Trop  tard,  but  it  must  have  meant 
much  more  to  him.  Reading  Luther's  Table 
Talk  many  years  ago,  I  was  struck  with 
the  fact  that  whenever  the  great  translator 
of  the  Bible  was  stirred,  he  quoted  Scripture 
in  Latin.  Fiihr'  uns  nicht  in  Versuchung 
of  his  own  Vater  miser  could  never  have 
meant  the  same  to  him  as  Ne  nos  indiicas 
in  tentationem.  One's  stock  of  Hebrew  may 
be  scant,  but  one  can  never  forget  the  narra- 
tive of  Samson  and  the  strange  puns  in  which 
he,  like  other  strong  men  of  history,  indulged, 
so  that  from  his  entrance  to  his  exit,  every 
utterance  is  a  rude  jest;  and  deeply  affecting 
as  the  story  of  Joseph  is  in  any  version,  the 
three  Hebrew  words  of  Jacob's  cry  over  the 
bloody  raiment  of  his  son  Joseph  defy  trans- 
lation, and  linger  in  the  memory  long  after 
what  Heinrich  Heine  called  the  "  tick  tack  " 
of  the  model  Hebrew  verb  has  become  a  faint 


86  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

echo  in  the  brain.  The  theme  is  so  vast,  the 
illustrations  so  abundant,  that  the  symmetry 
which  the  Greek  so  loved  and  which  I,  as  a 
lover  of  all  things  Greek,  so  love,  has  per- 
force been  abandoned,  but  the  Greeks  them- 
selves sacrificed  symmetry  to  Life,  and  so  I 
have  never  hesitated  to  sacrifice  symmetry  to 
Life,  but  as  I  come  to  a  close,  I  feel  most 
keenly  that  any  life  there  has  been  in  my  little 
talk  is  due  to  the  answering  life  in  your  in- 
dulgent attention,  for  which  you  have  my 
heartfelt  thanks. 


Lecture  III 
AMERICANISM   AND   HELLENISM 

I  had  given  an  alternative  title  to  this  last 
lecture,  and  had  called  it  Hellas  and  Hes- 
peria,  but  the  alliteration  was  so  attractive  that 
I  have  appropriated  it  for  the  whole  triad, 
which  it  fits  fairly  well.  Hesperia,  the  West- 
ern land,  was  to  the  Greek  of  old  the  Land 
of  Hope,  and  our  Western  land  is  the  Land 
of  Hope  to  the  Greek  of  to-day.  The  island 
of  Pelops  is  almost  depopulated  by  the  stream 
of  emigration  to  the  modern  Atlantis,  and  the 
Greek  of  to-day  recognizes  in  the  American- 
ism of  to-day  the  traits  of  an  ideal  Hellenism. 
And  so,  though  I  am  not  a  Greek  of  to-day, 
but  only  a  Grecian,  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  the  recognition  of  the  affinities  of  ancient 
Greek  and  modern  American  life,  which  I 
have  dared  to  call  the  American  element  in 
Greek  life,  may  serve  to  quicken  the  interest 
of  the  student  of  the  Greek  language  and  lit- 


88  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

erature,  and  even  if  it  abide  alone,  may  wake 
the  sense  of  kindred,  after  the  forms  of  the 
Greek  alphabet  become  misty. 

This  general  theme  has  always  been  a  favor- 
ite of  mine.  Creon  tells  his  son  Haemon  that 
Antigone  is  "  a  frigid  huggingpiece,"  and  how- 
ever frigid  my  huggingpiece  may  seem  to  oth- 
ers, I  have  pursued  it  as  a  phantom  of  delight 
ever  since  I  knew  what  love  is,  now  through 
the  crowds  of  the  agora,  now  round  the  steps 
of  the  bema,  now  over  the  meadows  of  the 
Muses  where  Aristophanes  disports  himself, 
now  over  battlefields  illuminated  by  stark  fig- 
ures in  blue  and  gray.  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  this  pursuit  has  made  for  life,  but  like 
everything  that  makes  for  life,  it  has  brought 
with  it  trouble,  and  my  indiscreet  urging  of  the 
theme  has  cost  me  more  than  one  rebuke.  So, 
for  instance,  in  one  of  my  essays  I  said:  "  It 
is  not  in  vain  that  the  American  student  has 
been  endowed  with  '  that  singular  buoyancy 
and  elasticity  '  which,  according  to  Dean  Stan- 
ley, is  the  marked  peculiarity  of  our  people, 
nor  in  vain  our  unequalled  adaptability,  our 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  89 

quick  perception,  our  straightforwardness  of 
intellectual  vision.  We  Americans,  said  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  think  straight  and  see  clear." 
And  again:  "Ancient  history  has  to  be  inter- 
preted into  terms  of  American  experience, 
and  it  would  not  be  saying  too  much  to  main- 
tain that  many  of  the  aspects  of  American  life 
enable  us  to  understand  the  ancients  better 
than  some  of  our  European  contemporaries 
do.  An  audacious,  inventive,  ready-witted 
people,  Americans  often  comprehend  the  au- 
dacious, inventive,  ready-witted  Greek  a  demt- 
mot,  while  the  German  professor  phrases  and 
the  English  '  don '  rubs  his  eyes,  and  the 
French  savant  appreciates  the  wrong  half." 
Whereupon  a  British  reviewer  charged  me 
with  "  vainglorious  patriotism."  Sometimes, 
it  is  true,  I  stop  and  ask  myself  in  an  access  of 
disillusionment.  What  right  have  I  to  speak 
of  America?  and  I  hear  snub-nosed  Socrates 
asking,  What  is  American?  'Tis  a  harder 
question  perhaps  for  a  man  of  my  antecedents 
than  "  What  is  Greek?  "  In  the  first  place, 
a  native  is  too  native  to  give  the  right  answer, 


90  HELLAS    AND    HESPERL4 

and  I  dare  not  invoke  the  aid  of  such  apostles 
of  Americanism  as  Professor  Brander  Mat- 
thews, Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke  or  President 
Butler,  the  most  recent  American  authorities 
on  the  subject;  and  in  order  to  be  truly  scien- 
tific, I  should  have  to  muster  the  evidence  of 
others,  from  Trollope  and  Basil  Hall  of  the 
old  time,  through  Dickens  of  a  later  date, 
down  to  the  witnesses  of  our  own  day,  friv- 
olous Max  O'Rell,  unsympathetic  Matthew 
Arnold  and  sympathetic  James  Bryce,  and  on 
the  basis  of  those  documents  draw  up  a  table 
of  American  characteristics  in  which  they  all 
agree — our  keenness  and  directness,  our  au- 
dacity, our  inventiveness,  our  light-hearted 
acceptance  of  the  shifts  of  fortune,  a  light- 
heartedness  that  makes  the  Greek  Therame- 
nes  an  American  statesman,  as  he  has  recently 
been  made  the  hero  of  an  historical  novel,  a 
novel  by  an  American  Hellenist,  Professor 
Gaines.  Time  was  when  we  of  this  region 
were  more  bent  on  asserting  diversity  than 
unity,  a  diversity  that  was  the  result  of  the 
conflicting  interests,  the  incessant  bickerings, 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  91 

the  different  ideals,  the  different  social  con- 
ditions. But  we  are  all  Americans  now,  and 
our  Americanism  is  borne  in  upon  us  by  for- 
eign critics,  who  were  the  first  to  teach  us 
that  Walt  Whitman,  whom  we  all  derided 
fifty  years  ago,  is  the  true  American  poet  and 
prophet;  all  the  others  mere  echoes  of  Euro- 
pean voices.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  Walt 
Whitman  would  not  have  heeded  the  scholar's 
plea  for  the  classics.  You  may  remember  his 
deliverance  in  his  Leaves  of  Grass : 

Dead   poets,   philosophers,   priests, 

Martyrs,  artists,  inventors,  governments  long  since, 

Language  shapers  on  other  shores, 

Nations  once  powerful,  nov?  reduced,  withdrawn  or  desolate, 

I  dare  not  proceed  till  I  respectfully  credit 

What  you  have  left  wafted  hither. 

I  have  perused   it,   own   it  is   admirable    (moving  awhile 

among  it). 
Think  nothing  can  ever  be  greater, 
Nothing  can  ever  deserve  more  than  it  deserves. 
Regarding  it  all  intently  a  long  while,  then  dismissing  it, 
I  stand  in  my  place  with  my  own  day  here. 

There  is  much  more  to  the  same  effect  in  our 
typical  American  poet  whom  Tennyson  ad- 
mired and  George  Eliot  quoted,  and  nothing 


92  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

could  be  more  characteristic  than  the  utter- 
ance: 

I  stand  in  mj'  place  with  my  own  day  here. 

And  as  an  American,  I  am  fully  in  accord  with 
him.  A  detached  American  is  for  the  most 
part  a  pitiful  spectacle.  But  it  is  precisely 
because  we  stand  in  our  place  with  our  own 
day  here  that  we  cannot  dismiss  the  past  so 
cavalierly  as  Whitman  has  done.  To  the 
dead  all  things  are  dead.  To  him  that  is 
alive  there  is  no  dead  poetry,  no  dead  lan- 
guage. "  Only  those  languages,"  said  Low- 
ell in  a  famous  discourse,  "  only  those  lan- 
guages can  be  called  dead  in  which  nothing 
living  was  ever  written."  There  is  no  need 
of  crediting  the  past,  as  Whitman  calls  it. 
The  past  collects  its  interest  by  the  inevitable 
process  of  eternal  laws.  Classical  antiquity 
is  not  driftwood,  as  Whitman  intimates,  not 
driftwood  out  of  which  to  build  fires  to  warm 
ourselves  and  dream  by,  calling  up  the  figures 
of  Jason  and  Medea,  of  Paris  and  Helen, 
and  listening  to  Arion   in  his  singing-robes. 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  93 

The  classical  caravel  is  still  seaworthy.  No 
Captain  Courageous  of  Gloucester,  Mass., 
is  more  popular  than  Odysseus  of  Ithaca. 
Retell  the  story  of  the  wanderings  of  the 
much-enduring  to  a  popular  audience,  if  you 
wish  to  find  out  whether  Homer  is  dead, 
and  what  Kipling  calls  his  bloomin'  lyre  has 
ceased  to  bloom.  No  happier  hours  in  my 
long  career  can  I  recall  than  those  I  spent  in 
repeating  the  tale  of  Old  Audacious  to  a  sym- 
pathetic audience  thirty  years  ago.  Tenny- 
son's Ulysses  I  need  not  mention.  Stephen 
Phillips's  Ulysses  I  mention  merely  to  protest 
against  his  perversion  of  the  only  true  story 
of  Odysseus  in  Hades.  It  is  then  precisely 
because  we  stand  in  our  own  place  here,  pre- 
cisely because  we  are  Americans  and  Walt 
Whitman  is  our  prophet,  that  we  insist  on  our 
inheritance  of  the  precious  past,  on  which  and 
by  which  we  live. 

But  I  have  already  spoken  of  Greek  as 
an  inheritance.  To-day  we  are  to  consider 
not  so  much  the  inheritance  as  the  kinship. 
Hellas   speaks   to   us   with   a   kindred   voice 


94  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 


and  looks  into  our  eyes  with  kindred  eyes. 
Like  the  Greeks,  we  Americans  have  found 
out  our  oneness  by  conflict  with  one  another, 
as  well  as  by  contrast  with  others.  The 
members  of  the  same  family  seldom  see  the 
likeness  that  strangers  recognize  at  once. 
There  is  a  national  handwriting  among  all 
the  diversities  of  chirography,  and  we  write 
American  as  we  are  written  down  Americans. 
American  is  as  distinctive  now  as  Greek  was 
then,  and  it  was  War,  the  father  of  all  things, 
that  revealed  us  to  ourselves.  America  is  a 
find  to  the  American  as  Greece  was  a  find  to 
the  Greeks,  to  adapt  the  famous  passage  of 
Herodotus.  It  was  the  Persian  War  that 
gave  Greece  her  unity — a  war  in  which  the 
Greeks  themselves  were  arrayed  on  different 
sides,  and  no  sooner  was  the  unity  brought 
about  than  the  old  enmity  asserted  itself,  and 
Greece  was  split  in  twain — North  against 
South  and  South  against  North. 

True,  these  historical  parallels  are  not  to 
be  urged.  The  unity  of  the  Greek  state  was 
the  city,  the  polis,  and  recent  historians  justly 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  95 

lay  great  stress  on  the  difference  between  the 
city  state,  the  Stadtstaat,  and  the  territorial 
state,  the  Flachenstaat.  We  are  not  to  be  mis- 
led by  a  name.  The  "  fierce  democratie  "  of 
Athens  was  a  narrov/  oligarchy  according  to 
modern  conceptions,  and  the  city  state  was  a 
mere  atom  in  comparison  with  our  empire 
states.  But  there  are  analogies  that  cannot  be 
lightly  thrust  aside  as  mere  fancies.  Greek 
history  is  after  all  in  some  respects  a  pocket 
edition  of  American  history,  and  the  founders 
of  the  Union  turned  to  Greek  history  rather 
than  to  Roman  history  when  they  considered 
the  problems  of  Federal  government,  just  as 
in  the  recent  development  of  American  life, 
the  Roman  Empire  is  ever  in  our  thoughts 
and  on  our  lips.  A  writer  famous  in  his  day, 
Alphonse  Karr,  in  his  Journey  round  my  Gar- 
den, ridicules  the  botanist  because  he  neglects 
the  element  of  size.  "  The  same  botanical  de- 
scription," he  says,  "  applies  to  the  baobab 
tree,  which  looks  like  a  forest  in  itself,  the  cir- 
cumference of  its  trunk  a  hundred  feet,  its  age 
6,000  years,  and  to  the  mallow,  a  little  trail- 


96  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

ing  plant  with  rose-colored  leaves,  so  small 
that  you  can  hardly  see  it  in  the  grass."  And 
yet  the  botanist  is  not  so  far  wrong  after  all. 
In  America  we  are  apt  to  overstress  the 
element  of  size.  It  is  a  national  reproach 
that  we  do  not  distinguish  "  bigness  "  and 
"  greatness."  The  organic  structure  is  the 
same  under  different  manifestations,  and  so 
the  pocket  handkerchief  domain  of  Hellas 
has  the  same  weft  as  the  enormous  canvas  of 
our  American  continent. 

Those  who  emphasize  the  influence  of 
physical  surroundings  in  the  character  of  a 
nation — and  the  emphasis  is  as  old  as  the 
scribe  that  left  on  record  the  story  of  Issachar 
— are  never  weary  of  enlarging  on  the  diver- 
sity of  Greek  climate,  Greek  soil,  Greek  pro- 
ductions, as  determining  the  character  of  the 
Greek  people.  It  is  an  old  story.  It  is  told 
in  Homer,  it  is  the  keynote  of  Herodotus. 
It  is  writ  large  in  Polybius,  in  Strabo.  Cur- 
tius,  the  historian  of  Alexander  the  Great,  fol- 
lowing Greek  authorities,  doubtless,  makes 
the  climate  of  India  responsible  for  the  char- 


AMERICANISM    AND    HELLENISM  97 

acter  of  the  Hindus,  and  oddly  enough,  it  is 
a  modern  Curtius  that  has  penned  the  fas- 
cinating chapters  in  which  he  unfolds  the  in- 
fluence of  land  and  sea  on  the  Greek  people. 
Every  geographer,  every  historian,  comments 
on  the  great  variety  of  Greek  climate,  mar- 
vellous variety  considering  the  limited  extent 
of  Greek  territory  proper.  The  extremes  are 
perhaps  not  quite  so  great  as  in  this  country, 
but  racial  sensitiveness  might  restore  the  par- 
allel in  one  direction,  as  facilities  of  com- 
munication would  restore  the  parallel  in  an- 
other. From  Maine  to  Florida  is  practically 
not  so  far  as  from  Thessaly  to  Laconia  in  the 
heyday  of  ancient  Greek  life.  But  what 
of  the  universal  neighborhood  of  the  sea? 
No  part  of  Greek  territory  was  more  than 
forty  miles  from  what  they  called  in  one 
mood,  Her  that  troubleth,  thalatta,  in  other 
moods.  Him  that  bridgeth,  pontos  (indefen- 
sible etymologies,!  fear, but  undoubted  facts). 
To  the  foreigner  the  American  prairie  has 
become  more  characteristic  than  the  American 
coast  line;  and  the  American  flag  is  rarely 


98  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

seen  In  foreign  ports.  The  Greeks  were  a 
maritime  people,  and  the  dwellers  on  our 
vast  plains  can  hardly  be  called  a  seafaring 
people,  but  their  language  Is  our  language, 
and  English,  American  English,  like  Greek, 
is  full  of  nautical  Imagery:  "We  ship  our 
goods,"  "  We  board  our  cars."  One  rec- 
ognizes the  old  Norse  yearning  for  the  sea  in 
the  prairie  schooner,  and  far  in  the  interior 
the  echoes  of  the  old  Viking  time  are  easily 
waked.  It  Is  not  without  significance  that  our 
battleships  bear  the  names  of  the  different 
States,  and  inland  Tennessee  is  as  vitally  in- 
terested in  her  namesake  as  Virginia,  whose 
capes  stretch  out  to  receive  the  commerce  of 
the  world.  A  favorite  theme  of  the  ancient 
sophists  was  the  reflections  of  an  inlander  at 
sight  of  a  ship.  There  is  no  American  in- 
lander of  whom  such  a  fancy  could  be  enter- 
tained. The  new  navy  draws  its  recruits  from 
the  Western  States  as  from  the  Eastern.  The 
great  lakes,  the  great  rivers,  provide  for  the 
training  of  the  man  from  Ohio  and  the  man 
from  Missouri,  and  offer  watery  paths  for  the 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  99 

"  whalebacks  "  of  the  MIchigander  and  the 
Chicagese.  So  even  at  this  point  of  seeming 
dissimilarity  there  is  a  certain  analogy  between 
Greek  and  American.  Despite  all  the  preach- 
ments of  political  economists  and  all  the 
frightful  waste  of  naval  armaments,  Ameri- 
cans like  Greeks  are  all  sea-fighters,  just  as 
the  Lacedaemonians,  who  were  late  in  learn- 
ing the  lesson,  learned  it  too  well  for  the 
Athenians  who  were  born  to  the  sea. 

But  continental  Greece  was  not  all  of 
Greece.  The  whole  Mediterranean  was 
fringed  with  Greek  colonies — to  adopt  a  fig- 
ure of  Cicero's — and  it  might  well  be  main- 
tained, as  has  been  maintained  by  Mr.  Free- 
man, that  the  true  analogue  of  the  United 
States,  which  we  do  not  hesitate  to  call  Amer- 
ica, is  the  Cocked  Hat  Island.  Sicily  lay  in 
the  region  which  was  to  the  Greeks  the  Land 
of  Promise.  Westward  Ho !  was  an  old  cry 
in  the  time  of  Archilochus.  The  West  was, 
as  I  have  said,  the  Land  of  Hope  to  the 
Greeks,  and  it  is  America  that  is  still  the  Hope 
of  this  Pandora  world.     America  is  the  last 


loo  HELLAS   AND    HESPERL4 

word  of  modern  history,  as  Greece  was  the 
last  word  of  ancient  history.  Like  the  Greeks, 
we  are  the  heirs  of  the  ages.  The  Romans 
were  not  ancients.  The  Romans  are  of  us 
and  we  are  Hving  their  life,  so  that  it  is 
not  necessary  to  hunt  up  more  or  less  re- 
mote analogies.  When  we  read  Ferrero,  we 
are  reading  the  history  of  our  own  times. 
Modern  research  has  pushed  antiquity  far 
back,  and  with  our  large  knowledge  of  early 
conditions,  much  that  was  considered  axio- 
matic in  my  youth  would  be  set  down  as  non- 
sense now.  Think  of  the  elaborate  discus- 
sions as  to  the  antiquity  of  the  art  of  writing. 
If  anyone  were  to  broach  such  a  subject  now, 
we  should  be  tempted  to  use  the  argumentum 
laterculinum  of  our  cousins  on  the  other  side 
and  heave  a  Ninevitish  brick  at  him.  No 
sooner  do  we  reach  by  the  instrumentality  of 
the  spade  what  we  consider  the  bedrock  of 
ancient  culture,  than  the  bedrock  turns  out  to 
be  no  bedrock  at  all,  but  a  layer  of  concrete 
superimposed  on  yet  other  layers.  No  sooner 
do  we  begin  to  speak  of  Mycenaean  civiliza- 


AMERICANISM   AND   HELLENISM  loi 

tion  than  we  have  to  consider  pre-Myceneean 
conditions.  The  Hittites  had  it  all  their  own 
way  for  a  while,  and  we  were  inclined  to  bar- 
gain with  them  as  did  Abraham  for  a  place 
in  which  to  bury  dead  theories,  other  people's 
dead  theories,  but  the  other  -ites  are  bound 
to  have  their  innings.  Enough,  the  Greeks  are 
to  us  as  they  were  to  the  Egyptians  of  old — 
mere  children — and,  if  children,  then  heirs  as 
we  are  of  a  rich  world  of  achievement  and  ex- 
perience. In  time  then,  as  in  space,  the 
American  is  as  the  Greek. 

And  the  American,  like  the  Greek,  has  pro- 
ceeded to  realize  his  inheritance,  and  that  in- 
heritance is  the  republican,  or  if  you  choose 
the  democratic,  form  of  government,  the  com- 
monwealth, to  give  it  its  best  name.  We 
cannot  well  think  of  Greece  as  anything  but 
a  commonwealth.  The  kings  (basileis),  the 
lords  (anaktes) ,  of  the  early  time  were 
poetical  shadows.  The  commonwealth  was 
the  normal  form  of  Greek  political  life. 
After  every  convulsion  of  the  state,  the  Hel- 
lenes reverted  as  a  matter  of  course  to  the 


I02  HELLAS   AND    HESPERL4 

plane  which  seems  to  be  basic.  But  it  was 
not  basic.  It  was  the  conquest  of  ages  of 
experience,  as  was  ours.  It  was  won  from 
generations  of  conflict,  as  was  ours.  Traces 
of  the  old  conditions  survive  in  the  names  and 
functions  of  certain  officers  in  Athens.  In 
Sparta  the  kingship  had  a  more  or  less  unreal 
life,  but  the  colonies  were  all  republics,  and 
the  colonies  had  the  mania  for  written  con- 
stitutions— paper  constitutions  we  are  begin- 
ning to  call  them,  and  more's  the  pity.  For 
the  art  of  writing  belongs  to  the  religious 
sphere,  and  while  it  may  not  have  been  the 
exclusive  property  of  the  priestly  guild,  there 
was  a  sacredness  about  the  written  law  that 
was  universally  recognized.  The  law-giver 
couched  his  law  in  writing,  and  the  popular 
appeal  to  "  the  higher  law,"  the  unwritten 
law,  the  saying,  "  What  is  the  Constitution 
among  friends?" — these  are  not  cheering 
symptoms  of  American  life.  Whether  the 
"  boss  "  who  looms  larger  and  larger  in  our 
political  life — the  "  boss  "  who  is  the  incorpo- 
ration of  individualism,  as  opposed  to  the  fun- 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  103 

damental  principles  of  the  commonwealth — 
shall  ripen  into  t\\e,tyrannos  of  the  Greek  state, 
remains  to  be  seen.  What  is  well  worth  noting 
is  the  Greek  horror  of  the  function  which  has 
been  transmitted  to  us  through  the  ages.  The 
Greeks  were  not  given  to  assassination  as  a 
political  measure.  Now  and  then  a  man  was 
found  conveniently  dead  in  the  market  for 
willow-wares,  now  and  then  there  was  a  ju- 
dicial murder.  But  the  tyrant  was  an  excep- 
tion. The  tyrannicide  was  a  theme  of  eulogy 
from  the  immortal  pair  of  friends,  commem- 
orated in  the  Skolion  of  Callistratus,  down  to 
the  latest  Greek  rhetorician  of  the  imperial 
time.  "  A  fine  shroud  is  the  tyrannis  "  is  a 
famous  saying  of  a  famous  tyrant,  and  the 
man  who  put  on  the  purple  robe  had  good 
reason  to  ask  himself  how  the  raiment  would 
look  as  a  cerement.  And  yet  the  Greek  tyran- 
nos  at  the  beginning  was  as  harmless  a  word 
as  the  Dutch  "  boss."  The  same  jealousy  of 
the  rights  of  the  people  is  shown  by  our  Eng- 
lish use  of  the  word  "  usurper."  The  danger 
of  the  assumption  of  undelegated  powers  has 


I04  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

Its  signal  in  the  name,  and  we  Americans  as 
heirs  of  the  Greek  republican  spirit  do  well 
to  watch  the  encroachments  of  executive  office. 
Our  forefathers,  as  we  have  seen,  studied  the 
structure  of  Greek  federation.     Our  contem- 
poraries on  the  other  side  are  watching  the 
steps  that  seem  to  be  leading  us  to  Caesarism. 
The  benevolent  tyrant  can  never  be  to  us  the 
ideal  form  of  government.     A  safe  slavery 
(asphalbs  dideuein)  is  as  abhorrent  to  us  as  it 
was  to  the  Greeks.    It  is  not  an  uncommon 
thesis  that  the  human  race  was  never  happier 
than  under  the  Antonines,  and  yet  the  sup- 
pression of  Christianity  was  one  of  the  condi- 
tions of  that  happiness  in  the  eyes  of  the  phi- 
losopher on  the  throne.  But  we  must  accept  the 
dangers  and  the  degeneracies  of  the  republic 
with  Its  form.    In  fact  the  student  of  Greek 
history  is  reminded  at  every  turn  of  the  ten- 
dencies of  our  day,  if  dangers  and  degener- 
acies are  thought  to  be  harsh  expressions,  and 
I  might  have  discharged  myself  of  the  func- 
tion I  have  undertaken  In  this  lecture  by  a 
talk  on  Life  In  the  Time  of  Aristophanes. 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  105 

How  Athenian  life  answers  to  ours,  I  can  il- 
lustrate by  my  own  experience,  as  indeed 
nearly  everything  I  have  said  in  these  confer- 
ences, I  have  lived.  Once  I  was  commissioned 
to  give  an  outline  of  Aristophanes'  plays  in  a 
few  lines,  and  those  who  know  Aristophanes 
and  America  will  recognize  the  meaning  of 
the  summary,  "Aristophanes,"  I  said,  "Aris- 
tophanes, an  aristocrat  by  party  allegiance, 
was  from  the  beginning  in  opposition  to  de- 
mocracy and  progress,  to  the  elevation  of  the 
masses,  to  the  career  open  to  talent,  to  free 
thought,  to  finer  art,  to  art  for  art's  sake,  to 
community  of  goods,  to  women's  rights,  to 
every  form  of  sophistic  phrase-making  and 
humanitarian  claptrap,"  The  slogans  and 
counterslogans  of  American  life  are  all  to  be 
heard  in  the  poems  of  the  bald-head  bard. 
And  Aristophanes'  picture  of  Athenian  life  is 
strikingly  like  our  own — with  its  fads,  its 
fancies,  its  futilities.  French  feuilletonistes 
and  French  scholars  have  written  whole  books 
on  Aristophanes  that  are  essentially  commen- 
taries on  actualities,  and  Aristophanes'  most 


io6  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 


audacious  woman-play,  the  Lyslstrata,  has 
been  reproduced  amid  rapturous  applause  be- 
fore a  French  audience. 

But  despite  the  license  of  the  modern  novel, 
English  and  American,  your  lecturer  is  not  pre- 
pared to  compare  the  seams  in  our  social  life 
with  the  seams  in  the  social  life  of  Greece. 
Public  life  offers  analogies  enough — I  will  not 
say  for  warning — the  admonitions  of  history, 
that  so-called  "  Philosophy  teaching  by  exam- 
ples," amount  to  very  little — but  for  amuse- 
ment. There  is  hardly  a  trick  in  modern 
politics  that  cannot  be  paralleled,  if  not  in  the 
verse  of  Aristophanes,  in  the  prose  of  Greek 
historians  and  orators  and  thinkers.  Caucuses 
and  rings  and  heelers  were  as  familiar  to  them 
as  to  us,  and  unfortunately  the  accuracy  of  the 
description  of  the  parasites  that  infest  the  life 
of  the  commonwealth  has  not  helped  to  extir- 
pate the  brood.  The  plague-bearing  mosquito 
abides,  and  has  taken  on  a  Greek  name,  and  an 
Apollo  is  needed  to  quell  the  plague-bearing 
rats  that  are  the  successors  of  the  plague- 
bearing  mice  of  antiquity. 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  107 

But  I  must  not  allow  my  discourse  to  as- 
sume the  pessimistic  character  so  natural  to 
those  whose  time  of  life  prompts  them  to 
extol  the  past  at  the  expense  of  the  pres- 
ent. The  old  teacher,  once  justly  detested, 
appears  to  the  old  pupil  glorified  by  the  hues 
of  his  own  iridescent  youth,  and  the  better 
days  of  the  republic  when  analyzed  by  the 
light  of  contemporary  documents  are  not  the 
Saturnia  regna  one  fancies  them  to  have  been, 
because  of  the  halo  of  oratory  that  encircled 
the  heroes  of  that  time,  in  the  days  when  life 
was  younger.  So  I  am  not  going  to  ransack 
Plato's  Dialogues  for  melancholy  pictures  of 
our  present  in  order  to  reinforce  my  parallels 
of  Greek  and  American  life.  Our  ship  of 
state — a  figure  we  owe  ultimately  to  a  Greek 
poet,  Alcaeus,  for  all  the  Greek  poets  were 
more  or  less  nautical,  the  Boeotian  Pindar  as 
well  as  the  islander  Bacchylides — our  ship  of 
state  has  a  strange  way  of  righting  herself,  had 
that  way  in  the  time  of  the  chainbox,  which 
may  be  supposed  to  symbolize  the  days  of 
slavery,  and  will  continue  to  have  it  in  these 


io8  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

times  of  the  water-ballast,  which  may  be  sup- 
posed to  represent  the  wave  of  prohibition. 
One  danger  of  which  one  hears  and  thinks  a 
great  deal  is  the  danger  of  having  said  ship 
swamped  by  alien  passengers,  who  will  in  time 
become  crew,  become  officers.  Here  in  Vir- 
ginia— in  the  Southern  States  generally — the 
danger  does  not  seem  imminent.  In  fact  we 
are  inviting  foreigners  to  embark  on  our  un- 
dermanned enterprises.  But  to  an  old-fash- 
ioned man  one  of  the  charms  of  a  visit  to  Eng- 
land is  the  infrequency  of  alien  names  on  the 
signs  of  the  shops.  In  the  retail  business  sec- 
tion of  the  city  where  I  live,  the  English  name 
is  the  exception.  Nearly  all  the  signs  seem  to 
have  been  made  in  Germany.  When  the  lin- 
guist scans  the  roster  of  our  army  and  navy, 
he  finds  representatives  of  every  European 
land — as  good  Americans  doubtless  as  the 
best,  though  the  names  bewray  the  foreign 
descent.  There  is  no  harm  in  this,  nay  much 
good  in  it.  There  is  a  tingle  of  adventure  in 
the  mingling  of  blood.  Matthew  Arnold  has 
held  forth  on  the  exceeding  preciousness  of 


AMERICANISM    AND    HELLENISM  109 


Celtic  blood  in  quickening  the  sluggish  current 
of  Anglo-Saxon  veins,  and  Du  Maurier  has 
insisted  humorously  on  the  importance,  if  not 
the  necessity,  of  a  dash  of  Jewish  ichor  for 
the  highest  manifestation  of  genius.  We  all 
feel  that  we  can  care  for  the  natives  of  West- 
ern Europe.  Other  problems  are  more  serious. 
A  dear  friend  of  mine,  now  numbered  with 
most  of  my  friends,  an  alumnus  of  this  uni- 
versity, used  to  insist  years  and  years  ago  with 
what  was  considered  humorous  exaggeration 
on  the  danger  of  the  complete  absorption  of 
the  original  stock  of  our  population  in  the 
Mongolian,  The  Chinese,  he  maintained,  had 
a  mission  analogous  to  that  of  the  Norway 
rat,  and  the  introduction  to  Virginius  Dab- 
ney's  chief  literary  performance,  Don  Miff,  is 
addressed  to  his  almond-eyed  descendant. 
That  was  many  years  before  statesmen  began 
to  discuss  gravely  the  Yellow  Peril. 

Now  it  is  not  my  purpose  in  these  desultory 
talks  of  an  old  student  who  has  spent  his  life 
apart  from  politics  to  enter  into  the  circle  of 
fire,  as  it  ought  to  be  called,  rather  than  the 


no  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

burning  question  of  our  relations  to  Asiatic  im- 
migration, I  can  only  say,  so  far  as  the  Greek, 
aspect  of  the  matter  goes,  that  the  Greek  suc- 
ceeded in  unifying  and  harmonizing  a  vast 
number  of  foreign  elements.  When  we  at- 
tempt to  push  our  researches  into  pre-Hellenic 
times,  we  encounter  a  great  variety  of  strains. 
The  names  of  stream  and  mountain  give  up 
their  secrets,  and  the  story  of  Greek  cults  re- 
veals many  Hnes  of  foreign  influence  and  for- 
eign origin.  Great  as  was  the  assimilative 
power  of  the  Greek,  not  less  great,  it  is  to  be 
confidently  hoped,  is  the  assimilative  power  of 
the  American.  If  we  scan  the  annals  of  Greek 
literature  narrowly,  we  find  that  some  of  the 
most  characteristic  figures  are  foreigners  or 
half-foreigners.  When  we  think  of  the  great 
historians,  Thucydides  looms  up  as  one  of  the 
peaks  of  the  biceps  Parnassus,  and  Thucydides 
was  only  a  semi-Greek.  The  Holkham  bust 
presents  us  with  the  features  of  an  English 
gentleman,  and  I  have  heard  Percy  Gardner, 
who  believes  in  the  lessons  of  Greek  iconogra- 
phy,  hold   forth   on  the  Jewish  cast  of  the 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  iii 

countenance  of  Zeno  the  Stoic.  After  Alex- 
ander the  spread  of  the  Greek  language 
makes  It  hard  to  draw  the  line  between  Greek 
and  Barbarian.  The  Asiatic  translated  his 
name  into  Greek,  at  a  later  time  into  Greco- 
Latin.  What  did  Lucian's  mother  call  the 
little  Samosatan  who  had  to  learn  Greek  in 
his  boyhood,  as  we  have  done,  but  under  more 
advantageous  circumstances.  We  pedants  of 
to-day  may  criticize  his  Greek,  but  we  cannot 
attain  to  his  lightness,  his  airiness,  and  only  the 
closest  analysis  can  distinguish  the  Syrian  oil 
color  from  the  Greek  water  color.  The  dom- 
ination of  a  nationality  comes  through  its  lan- 
guage. No  truer  Frenchmen  than  the  Gal- 
licized Germans  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  some  of  the  chauvinistes  of  our  times 
bear  unFrench  names.  And  English,  or  if 
you  choose,  the  American  type  of  English,  is 
destined  to  accomplish  the  same  end  for  the 
masses  of  foreigners  that  come  to  our  shore. 
A  generation,  a  short  time  in  the  history  of  the 
race,  is  not  so  short  in  an  undulatory  world  like 
ours.     Things  move  more  slowly  in  Europe, 


113  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

but  even  there  the  enclave  has  to  give  way, 
and  the  tide  of  the  dominant  language  over- 
flows the  barriers.  Even  to-day  the  sacred 
soil  of  Attica  is  occupied  mainly  by  Albanians, 
but  Albanian  must  yield  to  Greek — and 
Italian  quarters  and  Bohemian  quarters  will 
not  hold  their  own  against  the  encroachments 
of  the  tide  of  American  life. 

And  this  potent  organon  of  language  is 
wielded  by  a  people  at  whose  versatility  the 
European  observer  stands  aghast.  The  bar- 
riers are  to  be  broken  down,  not  only  by  the 
tide  of  affairs,  but  by  the  impetuous  winds  of 
human  will — of  American  will.  Speed,  says 
Henley,  and  the  hug  of  God's  winds.  The  ver- 
satility of  the  Greek  was  notorious.  The  ready 
shift  of  the  Greekling  under  the  Roman  Em- 
pire has  been  made  proverbial  by  Juvenal ;  and 
Johnson,  whom  no  Frenchman  loves,  whose 
popularity  is  a  mystery  even  to  such  a  sympa- 
thetic soul  as  Taine,  has  imitated  Juvenal's 
characteristic  and  applied  it  to  the  French. 
And  yet  it  is  a  Frenchman,  as  we  shall  see,  that 
has  given  most  emphatic  expression  to  the  as- 


AMERICANISM   AND   HELLENISM  113 

tonishing  versatility  of  the  American  genius. 
The  conditions  of  our  colonial  life  may  have 
had  something  to  do  with  it,  but  the  same  ver- 
satility can  be  found  in  our  oldest  communities. 
Some  of  us  oldsters  have  seen  a  bishop  become 
a  general.  Priest,  actor,  ballet-dancer,  musical 
composer,  poet,  general — such  a  combination 
does  not  stagger  those  who  have  known 
preacher,  lawyer,  school-master,  horse-jockey, 
prize-fighter,  politician,  rolled  into  one — I  beg 
pardon,  politician  means  all  that.  True,  in 
serious  matters  like  art,  the  Greek  did  not 
move  so  readily  from  one  province  to  another. 
In  fact,  the  limitation  of  the  prose  writer  to 
prose,  of  the  poet  to  poetry,  and  so  on  along 
all  the  lines  of  literary  effort,  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  characteristics  of  the  Greek. 
But  in  the  various  demands  of  practical  life, 
the  life  which  they  saw  so  steadily  and  lived 
so  whole.  If  I  may  be  allowed  to  adapt  a  fa- 
mous line,  your  Greek  was  always  equal  to 
the  occasion,  and  this  mobility  shows  itself 
also  in  the  sphere  of  morals,  and  here  the 
American   is   quite   his  equal.      Max   O'Rell 


114  HELLAS    AND    HESPERIA 

attributed  to  our  English  blood  the  rapid 
passage  from  poker  to  prayers,  from  three- 
card  monte  to  four-part  psalmody.  True,  M. 
Blouet  says  it  is  our  English  blood.  It  is,  I 
suppose,  that  "  spleen  "  by  which  Frenchmen 
explain  everything.  But  if  it  is  English,  it  is 
enhanced  by  our  intense  vitality.  Not  Eng- 
lish but  Greek  is  the  ready  receptivity  of  for- 
eign ideas.  In  this  respect  the  Channel  is 
broader  than  the  Atlantic.  Nay,  there  is  much 
that  crosses  the  water  to  us  and  then  recrosses 
it  to  our  English  cousins.  The  American 
scholar  Is  often  more  German  than  the  Ger- 
man. Yes!  we  are  versatile  and  versatile  to 
a  purpose.  What  does  a  man  like  Hopklnson 
Smith  care  for  the  old  Greek  sneer  that  has 
its  echo  In  the  English  saying  "  Jack  of  all 
trades  and  master  of  none  "  ?  What  your  own 
Professor  Humphreys,  with  his  exact  com- 
mand of  all  the  canons  of  literature  and 
science?  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  advance  of 
specialization  will  not  rob  us  of  the  Greek 
readiness  to  turn  our  hands  to  anything  that 
lies  near.   It  is  the  curse  of  modern  machinery 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  115 

that  it  reduces  the  human  being  to  a  mere 
feeder  of  a  monster  of  cogs  and  belts.  Advance 
did  I  say?  Specialization  is  as  old  as  Jubal  and 
Tubal  Cain.  The  Egyptians  were  noted  spe- 
cialists; there  were  doctors  for  every  part  of 
the  body,  and  Jack  the  Ripper  was  a  specialist 
under  the  name  of  the  paraschistes,  or  side- 
splitter,  a  name  that  we  attach  to  a  very  differ- 
ent function  from  that  of  the  man  who  opened 
bodies  for  embalming.  There  were  specialists 
in  Greece,  specialists  in  surgery,  manufacturers 
of  hair-nets  for  women;  specialists  in  Rome, 
who  made  it  their  business  to  efface  the  scars 
of  branded  slaves  that  had  risen  in  the  world. 
But  the  Greek  note  is  universality,  and  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  we  shall  never  lose  that  Greek 
note,  which  is  the  admiration  of  all  who  come 
to  our  shores,  and  which  is  so  important  a  fac- 
tor in  our  subjugation  of  this  vast  continent. 
But  before  leaving  this  part  of  my  theme — 
the  likeness  of  Greek  to  American,  of  Ameri- 
can to  Greek — I  must  not  omit  one  trait  that 
the  genuine  American  and  genuine  Greek  have 
In  common,   although   I  may  be  behind  the 


ii6  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

times  In  asserting  It,  a  trait  that  belongs  to  the 
democratic  character  of  both  nationalities.  It 
Is  not  freedom  of  speech,  that  parrhesia  of 
which  the  Greeks  were  so  proud.  A  certain 
bluntness  Is  found  under  all  forms  of  govern- 
ment, but  It  is  a  subtler  freedom  than  that — 
it  is  freedom  from  snobbery.  Flatterers  and 
parasites  the  Greeks  had  with  them  always. 
They  were  conspicuous  In  the  decline  of  the 
nationality,  and  Plutarch  has  an  entertaining 
essay  on  the  way  to  distinguish  the  flatterer 
from  the  friend.  But  they  were  scarcely  less 
conspicuous  in  an  earlier  period,  and  Ribbeck's 
dehghtful  study  of  the  "  Kolax  "  claims  for 
that  variety  a  semi-religious  origin.  But  a 
"  snob  "  the  Greek  never  was,  and  the  snob- 
bery of  the  American  Is  an  imported  snobbery. 
The  Books  of  Snobs  could  not  have  been  writ- 
ten by  an  American  of  the  old  type.  That  the 
imported  disease,  like  the  English  sparrow, 
has  increased  greatly  and  multiplied  in  this 
country  the  satirist  may  maintain.  But 
the  salt  water  of  the  herring  pond  seems 
to  have  killed  the  germ  in  our  American  pro- 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  117 

genitors.  True,  It  is  associated  with  high 
things  and  high  words,  but  it  spoils  high 
things  and  high  words,  and  the  man  of  old 
American  stock  prefers  "  faith  "  to  "  loy- 
alty "  and  "  obedience  "  to  "  homage."  Snob- 
bish commentators  cannot  understand  how 
Pindar  could  have  called  Hiero  "  friend  " ; 
the  Italian  student  of  the  poet  compares  the 
Theban  singer  to  a  Knight  of  the  Order  of 
the  Annunziata,  who  is  the  peer  of  his  sov- 
ereign. True  Americans  are  all  Knights  of 
a  spiritual  Annunziata  order. 

I  have  referred  to  Professor  Brander  Mat- 
thews as  the  great  champion  of  Americanism 
In  language  and  literature  and  life,  and  I  have 
been  reading  a  discourse  of  his  pronounced 
some  years  ago,  in  which  he  repelled  the 
charge  that  we  i\.merlcans  are  a  people  terri- 
bly practical,  systematically  hostile  to  all 
idealism.  And  it  Is  true  that  if  there  Is  any  ad- 
jective that  fits  an  American  in  European 
eyes,  it  is  practical.  To  be  an  American  is 
to  be  practical.  A  German  grammarian  de- 
sirous of  vindicating  his  method  to  his  coun- 


ii8  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

trymen  emphasized  the  fact  that  it  had  been 
adopted  by  a  practical  American,  and  that 
practical  American  is  the  man  who  is  address- 
ing you,  a  man  who  was  at  that  time  thought 
by  his  own  countrymen  to  be  steeped  in  Ger- 
man idealism.  I  have  therefore  been  called 
practical  simply  because  I  am  an  American, 
just  as  I  have  been  called  a  Yankee  by  a 
French  critic,  because  I  am  an  American. 
True,  mistakes  enough  may  be  made  in  the 
application  of  these  sweeping  characteristics  of 
a  nationality,  and  I  remember  that  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  records  somewhere  how  he 
picked  out  in  a  New  York  hotel  a  cadaverous, 
omnivorous  individual  as  a  typical  American, 
who  turned  out  to  be  a  genuine  Briton.  What- 
ever mistakes  may  be  made  in  applying  these 
characteristics  to  this  man  and  that,  there  can 
be  no  mistake  about  the  practical  feature  of 
our  American  people.  There  are  those  that 
have  denied  us  energy,  and  it  has  been  main- 
tained perhaps  by  way  of  paradox  that  your 
typical  American  spends  his  time  in  a  rocking 
chair  on  a  back  porch,  whittling  sticks  and  ex- 


AMERICANISM    4ND    HELLENISM  119 

emplifying  his  national  indolence  by  the  in- 
vention of  labor-saving  machines.  Nothing 
could  be  more  "  practical  "  than  the  labor- 
saving  machine,  as  nothing  can  be  more  au- 
dacious than  the  American  protest,  futile  as 
it  is,  against  the  primal  doom  of  toil.  But 
practical  we  are  and  practical  was  the  Greek. 
The  most  artistic  of  races  was  at  the  same 
time  the  most  bent  on  getting  results,  and  the 
latest  phase  of  philosophic  thought,  pragma- 
tism, most  effectively  preached  by  an  Ameri- 
can, is  nothing  more  than  the  interpretation  of 
a  Greek  word.  The  sphere  of  human  work 
was  divided  by  the  Greek  into  zones  of  artis- 
tic creation  and  practical  efficiency,  poiein  and 
prattein.  Prattein  encroached  more  and  more 
on  poiein,  but  poiein  held  its  own  in  so  far  as 
it  gave  the  life  of  art  to  prattein.  When 
Horace  put  utile  before  didci,  he  was  follow- 
ing the  Greek  order — though  the  Greek  way 
of  mixing  liquors  differed  in  different  ages, 
first  wine  on  water,  then  water  on  wine.  We 
do  not  like  to  think  that  Shakespeare  was  so 
practical  a  man  as  the  record  shows  him  to 


120  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

have  been,  that  he  valued  so  highly  the  ma- 
terial results  of  his  work  as  a  dramatist  and 
an  actor — but  that  did  not  render  the  work 
itself  less  idealistic.  But  the  Greek  went  fur- 
ther than  that.  The  artistic  work  itself  must 
be  practical.  Every  tool  must  follow  the  lines 
of  greatest  efficiency.  Poetry  was  valuable  for 
its  moral  lessons.  Philosophy  was  not  mere 
speculation,  it  was  largely  ethics.  The  Greek 
found  himself  In  Socrates,  and  Plato  was  in 
the  first  line  a  teacher  of  righteousness.  When 
Grote,  the  friend  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  was 
looking  for  a  motto  to  be  prefixed  to  his  work 
on  Plato,  he  had  no  difficulty  in  finding  one  to 
rejoice  the  heart  of  the  utilitarian.  The  glori- 
fication of  money  as  the  ultimate  expression 
of  achievement  was  ancient  Greek  as  it  Is 
modern  American.  It  was  said  of  Euripides 
that  he  hated  women  so  because  he  loved  them 
so,  and  all  the  teachings  of  Cynic  and  Stoic — 
all  the  preachments  against  the  love  of  money 
from  the  answer  of  the  Pythia  to  Sparta  down 
to  the  present  day  with  its  praise  of  the  simple 
life   only  show   that   human  nature   changes 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  izi 

not,  and  the  Greek  and  the  American  are  ad- 
vanced types  of  humanity.  "  Money  talks  " 
is  an  American  saying.  The  brazen  tongue 
must  wag  in  a  golden  mouth.  "  Money,  money 
is  the  man,"  is  an  ancient  saying  quoted  by  the 
loftiest  of  Greek  poets,  quoted,  it  is  true, 
in  protest  against  the  domination  of  filthy 
lucre,  but  we,  who  live  in  a  plutocracy,  recog- 
nize the  voice  of  the  people.  "  Obolus  dia- 
bolus,"  is  the  title  of  one  of  the  sermons 
preached  by  the  old  Augustin  friar,  Abraham 
a  Sancta  Clara,  and  Greek  and  American 
alike  are  not  averse  from  this  form  of  devil 
worship. 

I  am  not  at  the  end  of  my  analogies.  They 
come  up  on  every  side,  at  the  bidding  of  fancy, 
at  the  bidding  of  experience,  but  I  am  nearing 
the  limit  of  my  time,  and  this  talk — alas!  we 
have  no  equivalent  for  the  French  causerie — 
must  come  to  a  close  in  a  few  minutes.  So  far 
as  there  is  any  coherence  in  what  I  have  said, 
I  have  tried  to  illustrate,  or  at  any  rate  to 
point  out  certain  resemblances  between  Greek 
and  American  life  and  character.     I  have  not 


122  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

even  attempted  to  be  systematic.  After  an  in- 
ordinately long  introduction  I  dwelt — or 
rather  lighted,  for  I  have  not  dwelt  on  any- 
thing— I  touched  on  American  and  Greek 
surroundings,  American  and  Greek  position  in 
time,  the  common  republican  basis  of  the 
American  and  Greek  state,  the  assimilative 
power  of  both  nationalities,  the  versatility  and 
practicality  of  Greek  and  American.  But 
concrete  examples  would  be  at  once  more  in- 
teresting and  convincing  than  analysis,  and 
analogies  are  easily  made,  easily  drawn,  it 
may  be  said,  and  as  easily  unmade,  as  easily 
wiped  out.  What  one  sees  in  history  is  often 
nothing  more  than  the  projection  of  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  beholder.  We  peer  into 
the  open  eye  to  see  our  own  image.  One 
statesman  reads  Plato  and  gathers  from  Re- 
public and  Laws  lessons  of  momentous  impor- 
tance for  the  conduct  of  the  commonwealth. 
Another  reads  Plato  and  vows  that  he  has 
carried  away  nothing  except  Eryximachus' 
remedy  for  sneezing,  so  dramatically  intro- 
duced in  the  Symposium.    And  when  analogy 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  123 

ventures  into  the  domain  of  prophecy — we 
all  know  how  the  wise  man  becomes  the  wise- 
acre, and  the  example  of  Mr.  Freeman,  who 
foresaw  the  dissolution  of  the  great  American 
commonwealth  prefigured  in  the  fate  of  the 
Achaean  League,  is  ever  before  the  student  of 
our  history.  The  end  has  been  far  other  than 
was  dreamed  of  by  the  philosophizing  histo- 
rian. The  petty  states  of  Greece  were  swept  in- 
to the  current  of  the  Roman  Empire,  a  cur- 
rent that  came  from  without.  The  attitude  of 
the  Roman  to  the  Greek  was  that  of  contempt- 
uous tolerance,  not  of  half-wondering  hatred. 
Consolidation,  fusion,  domination,  these  are 
the  American  processes  of  which  Greece  knew 
nothing.  Greece  was  after  all  a  spiritual 
power,  and  the  lessons  that  we  are  to  learn 
come  from  Rome,  as  I  have  already  hinted, 
Rome,  once  etymologized  as  the  Greek  rhome, 
"  strength,"  anon  as  the  English  "  stream." 
And  so  we  come  back  to  the  ship  of  state, 
which  the  Greek  poet  launched  so  many  cen- 
turies ago.  A  mighty  stream  is  this  on  which 
you  and  I  are  borne  as  part  of  a  proud  fleet. 


134  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

But  there  were  times  when  the  current  meant 
wreckage;  and  I  turn  my  eyes  from  the  days 
of  danger  and  distress,  too  real  to  me  still 
for  indulgence  in  fanciful  historical  parallels. 
My  plea  has  been  for  the  vitality  of  the 
studies  to  which  I  have  been  addicted,  and 
as  those  studies  have  been  part  of  my  own 
life — not  simply  a  meros  but  a  melos — I  have 
never  disentwined  the  thews  and  sinews  that 
have  kept  me  going  after  a  fashion  until 
now.  My  Greek  study  has  not  simply  been 
a  marginal  note  on  my  American  life,  and 
vice  versa.  My  life  has  been  written  bu- 
strophedon  fashion,  and  as  I  turn  the  fur- 
row, the  Greek  line  can't  be  distinguished 
from  the  American.  A  Southerner,  I  shared 
the  fortunes  of  my  people  in  the  Civil  War, 
but  whether  on  the  edge  of  battle  in  the  field 
or  in  the  vise  of  penury  at  home,  my  thoughts 
were  with  those  who  registered  the  experiences 
of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  with  Thucydides 
and  Aristophanes.  But  I  am  sure  it  will  be  a 
relief  to  this  personal  tone  if  I  can  turn  on 
the  phonograph  and  introduce  a  new  speaker 


AMERICANISM   AND   HELLENISM  125 

on  the  subject  I  have  tried  to  sketch.  This 
time  I  will  call  on  a  modern  Greek  to  tell  you 
what  he  thinks  of  Hellenism  and  American- 
ism, of  the  relation  of  Hellas  to  Hesperia. 

The  modern  Greek,  whatever  may  be  said 
about  his  racial  affinities  with  the  ancient 
Greek,  commends  himself  to  our  affection  and 
regard  by  his  passionate  identification  of  the 
Hellenes  that  now  are  with  the  Hellenes  that 
once  were.  It  is  all  living  Greece  to  him. 
Hellenism  is  his  watchword,  and  not  unGreek 
is  the  eager  appropriation  of  all  that  modern 
civilization  offers.  One  is  constantly  reminded 
of  agencies  that  were  set  to  work  seventy  or 
eighty  years  ago,  such  as  the  Society  for 
the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,  to 
which  we  owe  Miiller's  History  of  Greek  Lit- 
erature— a  book  that  can  never  become  obso- 
lete. A  similar  society  is  in  active  operation 
in  Greece,  and  one  of  the  prime  movers  was, 
I  am  sorry  to  say,  was  my  friend,  that  finest 
type  of  the  modern  Greek,  Dimitrios  Bikelas, 
to  whom  I  referred  in  a  previous  lecture, 
the  famous  author  of  Loukis  Laras,  a  novel 


126  HELLAS   AND    HESPERIA 

that  has  been  translated  into  almost  every 
European  tongue.  The  name  of  the  series 
may  be  roughly  rendered  Library  of  Useful 
Knowledge,  and  as  I  was  meditating  the  theme 
of  my  present  lecture,  I  came  across  the  num- 
ber that  deals  with  America.  I  am  rather 
fond  of  reading  books  that  depict  American 
life  from  the  point  of  view  of  foreigners,  and 
I  had  just  been  reading  a  series  of  articles  in 
which  a  modern  Greek  immigrant  expresses 
his  astonishment  at  the  cheapness  of  Ameri- 
can viands  and  the  extravagant  charges  of 
American  bootblacks.  So  I  turned  not  with- 
out interest  to  what  our  modern  Hellene  had 
to  say  about  the  modern  Hesperia,  and  I  was 
still  more  interested  to  find  that  the  conclud- 
ing pages  of  the  booklet  were  given  up  to  a 
somewhat  elaborate  parallelism  of  Hellenism 
and  Americanism.  Americanism,  the  author 
maintains,  is  really  a  revival  of  Hellenism, 
and  the  Americanization  of  the  world,  which 
he  seems  to  consider  inevitable,  is  really  car- 
rying on  the  good  work  begun  by  Alexander. 
I  wish  I  had  space  to  give  in  detail  his  list  of 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  127 

analogues,  his  vindication  of  American  soci- 
ety as  based  on  the  soundest  ethical,  hygienic 
and  economic  principles.  Some  of  these  an- 
alogues I  am  afraid  you  would  consider  fan- 
ciful, some  that  are  true  in  principle  are 
hardly  borne  out  by  the  actual  facts.  The 
ancient  Spartans,  says  our  author,  used  to 
throw  into  the  ravine  called  Kaiadas  all  de- 
fective infants — a  proceeding  against  which 
the  eulogists  of  Christianity  were  wont  to  de- 
claim with  intense  abhorrence.  Analogous  to 
this,  he  thinks,  is  the  restriction  of  immigration 
to  those  who  are  physically  fit  for  the  work 
of  life.  The  modern  American,  he  goes  on  to 
say,  has  the  Greek  passion  for  physical  per- 
fection. The  America  of  to-day,  like  the 
Greece  of  yore,  reposes  on  democratic  princi- 
ples. Each  man  is  master  of  his  own  fate, 
and  our  modern  Greek  seems  to  believ^e  in 
presidential  potentialities  as  well  as  presiden- 
tial possibilities  for  every  American  school- 
boy. It  is  indeed  very  interesting  to  see  how 
our  generous  encomiast  accepts  legislation  as 
realization,  how  he  hails  the  preachments  of 


128  HELLAS   AND   HESPERIA 

divines  and  lecturers  as  an  assurance  of  proph- 
ecies fulfilled.  "  To  will  perfection,"  he 
seems  to  think,  "  is  the  norm  of  man,"  and  he 
is  not  so  far  wrong.  We  are  as  our  ideals. 
Marriage  is  to  be  forbidden  to  those  who  are 
physically  and  mentally  unfit  for  the  connubial 
relation,  and  the  American  child  is  to  be  the 
most  perfect  product  of  the  age.  Oddly 
enough  he  does  not  count  the  facility  of  di- 
vorce as  an  evidence  of  our  readiness  to  multi- 
ply experiments  in  that  direction.  The  crown- 
ing glory  of  Americanism,  he  declares,  is  the 
American  woman.  The  more  American  wom- 
en married  to  Europeans,  the  better  for  the 
European  races.  The  Spartan  women  in  an- 
tiquity were  in  great  demand  as  nurses.  The 
American  woman  ought  to  be  in  great  demand 
as  a  wife — quite  apart,  he  takes  care  to  add, 
from  the  substantial  dowry  so  many  of  them 
bring  to  the  common  stock.  America  makes 
for  life,  for  progress.  The  Americanization 
of  Europe  is  inevitable — we  see  it  in  every 
port,  in  every  capital  of  Europe — and  moving 
as  it  does  on  Hellenic  lines,  it  is  a  blessing  to 


AMERICANISM   AND    HELLENISM  129 

the  world  as  was  the  Hellenization  of  the 
Orient  of  old.  All  this  is  rather  amusing  than 
convincing,  and  yet  there  is  enough  sober 
truth  behind  the  smiling  sophistry  to  warrant 
the  citation  here  as  an  envoi  to  my  own  anal- 
ogies, which,  I  trust,  are  at  least  a  little  less 
fanciful  than  those  of  my  Athenian  colleague. 
And  now  as  I  am  about  to  close  this  lecture, 
or  rather  this  series  of  rambling  talks,  it  oc- 
curs to  me  that  I  have  omitted  one  striking 
trait  of  the  Greek  character,  which  is  also  a 
marked  feature  of  our  own  nationality.  Ready 
wit,  audacity,  resourcefulness,  practicality,  all 
these  we  have  in  common  with  the  Greeks. 
We  are  versatile  as  they  were,  we  moralize 
as  they  moralized,  Franklin  is  as  Theognis, 
but  these  are  not  necessarily  amiable  ways,  and 
I  am  going  to  take  refuge  in  that  delightful 
tolerance  for  which  Matthew  Arnold  could 
find  no  adequate  translation,  because  he 
thought  that  epieikeia  was  a  national  Greek 
virtue.  He  made  a  shift  of  rendering  it  Into 
English  by  "  sweet  reasonableness,"  and  it 
is  to  this  "  sweet  reasonableness,"  this  readi- 


I30  HELLAS    AND    HESPERL4 

ness  to  put  up  with  things,  this  acceptance  of 
the  situation,  this  large  allowance  for  individ- 
ual failings,  this  good  humor  in  the  crowded 
mart  of  life,  this  epieikeia  which  some  con- 
sider the  bane  of  our  politics,  it  is  this  epiei- 
keia to  which  I  make  my  final  appeal.  The 
half-consciousness  of  failure  that  haunts  gen- 
ius, as  I  have  phrased  it,  may  become  the  full 
consciousness  of  failure  to  the  old  student  who 
has  submitted  his  unfashionable  wares  to  the 
inspection  of  the  new  generation.  But  the 
new  generation  has,  I  trust,  retained  the  char- 
acteristics as  well  as  the  traditions  of  the  old, 
and  your  indulgent  attention  during  the  course 
of  these  deliverances  has  sustained  me  to  the 
end  of  my  task. 


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